HomeCar CultureEye candy: Wheels

Eye candy: Wheels

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Photos by Larry Edsall

According to the dictionary I keep within handy reach of the laptop computer that sits atop my desk, a wheel is “a circular frame or disk arranged to revolve on an axle and used to facilitate the motion of a vehicle…”

Wheels have been around for a long time. Even Fred Flintstone used them.

During the Renaissance, the wheel was defined as one of the six simple machines. The others were the lever, the pulley, the screw, the inclined plane and the wedge. Combine two or more of those simple machines, perhaps adding teeth around the edge of a wheel, and you can build some not-so-simple machines Perhaps even an automobile.

“Don’t reinvent the wheel,” we hear all the time. However, no one seems to have minded the ongoing improvement to the wheel, and not only from its construction from wood to steel to aluminum to magnesium and most recently to carbon fiber, but from making wheels and the tires that circumference them more efficient, thus allowing us to travel further on less fuel.

But we’d rather enjoy what wheels do — carry us down the road — than ponder their engineering and evolution.

We also enjoy looking at wheels on classic cars, especially when we take time to get up close and  examine some of their fascinating details.

 

 

Larry Edsall
Larry Edsall
A former daily newspaper sports editor, Larry Edsall spent a dozen years as an editor at AutoWeek magazine before making the transition to writing for the web and becoming the author of more than 15 automotive books. In addition to being founding editor at ClassicCars.com, Larry has written for The New York Times and The Detroit News and was an adjunct honors professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

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