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In 1492, Columbus crossed the Atlantic, bringing with him a New World conquest that ushered in the era of globalization. It was a moment when the New World and the Old World met, the beginning of a historical process that was inseparable from the wheel. However, to understand how the wheel has shaped modern society, we need to travel back in time to a series of technological revolutions, from clocks to textiles to the steam engine, each of which could not have been inseparable from the wheel.
In ancient times, people lived like years, and the passage of time was difficult to measure accurately. Water clocks, hourglasses, sundials and other timekeeping tools did not fully meet people's needs, until the application of gears, the emergence of mechanical clocks, time became accurate, like the existence of God.
This precise time record led to the rise of industry. The birth of the printing press paved the way for the dissemination of knowledge and accelerated the enlightenment of ideas. The industrial system of Europe began to be established, and the rotary printing press made newspapers a reality, and the dissemination of information entered a new era.
However, the real efficiency revolution starts with the textile industry. The textile industry is an ancient and hard-working industry, and the Indian spinning wheel is a symbol of human labor, but the wheel changes everything. The advent of the Jenny loom and mule machine set off a textile revolution that defeated traditional weaving methods.
Time went on, and the advent of the steam engine triggered an unprecedented power change. Fuel, which could only heat and emit light, could be converted into huge power under Watt's improved steam engine, bringing about the industrial revolution. This revolution was actually a revolution on wheels, because the wheel became the core of all kinds of machines.
"Hand mills produce the society of feudal lords, steam mills produce the society of industrial capitalists", Marx's words profoundly pointed out the key role of the wheel. From windmills and water mills to mechanized production lines, everything depends on the rotation of the wheels. With the movement of the wheel, everything became possible, and the pursuit of production and speed became a central theme of modern society.
Ford's assembly line production methods may be well known, but before the advent of automobiles, ancient four-wheeled carriages had achieved factory-standardized mass manufacturing, which included new technologies such as glass windows, rubber tires and ball bearings to make carriages cheaper and more comfortable. The birth of the automobile simply replaced the way horses were pulled by the internal combustion engine, and the wheel had already paved the way for the Industrial Revolution.
However, in Chinese cities, the spread of the wheel has gone through a somewhat different course. China's palanquin is not as prevalent as horse-drawn carriages in Europe, but a "rickshaw" equipped with rubber tires and sponge seats leading the modernization of cities. This rickshaw was given to the "cloth boss" Wu Zhihui, but he transformed it into a sofa chair, believing that humans do not need to be pulled by others, but only walk by themselves. The rickshaw is undoubtedly an improvement on the Chinese palanquin and an effort towards modernization.
However, the wheel has not spread on a large scale in rural areas outside of China's cities, and traditional foot power and livestock transportation still dominate. Before the Industrial Revolution, villages around the world faced the problem of transportation without wheels. The wheel is just one of many manifestations of human intelligence, but it plays an indispensable role in modern society.
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