The Wheel and the Road.
Page 73
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1HE original inventor of the wheel—a pre-historic log-roller presumably—was actually responsible for a discovery which has had more far-reaching results than any other detail advance in mechanical science. Transport on land has been rendered possible; to any practicable extent, only by the use of wheels for vehicles, although caravans and pack saddles have served their purpose. This, of course, although all-important to us and to our present industry, is but a single one of numberless uses of the wheel. Nevertheless, the commercial. vehicle industry owes its whole existence to the road wheel; the caterpillar or chain-track machine has not yet proved its practicability except on polar ice—a strictly-limited field of operations, to be sure—and for certain military experiments.
Saving its immature propensity towards noisy and occasionally odorous operation, the public had little quarrel with the motor from its earliest. The only real, just cause of complaint was of the damage to the roads, and this complaint is even louder to-day. Conscious critics have, however, not failed to realize that the fault has largely been one of the road-builder's.
Of all components the road wheel and its tire is the one which has come most into conflict with public opinion. The elastic tread has, meantime, whilst prolonging the unfatigued period of the vehicle's mechanism, quietened our streets and taught us road-surfacing.
It is well to consider how remarkably the industrial wheel's solidrubber tread stands up to such terrible conditions, for terrible they , undoubtedly are. That a service guarantee of many thousands of miles on reasonable roads can be offered. by makers, in spite of fierceclutch effect and of panicky braking, and in spite of occasional loose road metal and of not infrequent skids, is astonishing to those who realize the fragile nature of such a tread, the shock-absorbing properties of which are entirely due to its ability to deform under load.
The combination, for pioneer purposes, of new road construction, and of self-propelled rubber-tired traffic for it, has already in many Overseas back-lands effectively supplanted light-railway construction, much as the char-h-banes and its rubber tire are doing in the Homeland.
The heaviest of lorries can now, owing to higher legal and practicable speeds, be shod economically with rubber ; it is on the cards that, at home at any rate, elastic tires may, before long, be a legal necessity on all self-propelled road vehicles.
Of pneumatics we have some little to say, but they are, as a matter of fact, of little use in the commercial-motor industry, excepting in regard to the motorcab and the smaller vans.
THE EDITOR.