Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1875 — Wheeled Vehicles. [ARTICLE]

Wheeled Vehicles.

one which takss us bock to the rerr ongm of all history. The horse was undoubtedly the animal whose labor was first uttiI^edna^’cmturies before the wheel was known as a vehicle of locomotion or transportation. Carrying loads was the first occupation of thb useful animal; next be was probably employed, as the Indians on thiscontinent still use him, to drag loads or poles—one end ofsaid poles being secured to the flanks of the animal, while the other rested upon the ground, the load being placed near the middle. The next idea was to rest the ground end of the poles on wheels, from which the transition to the two-wheeled cart and the ancient chariot was a very natural step. No doubt the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians were content, for many ages, to travel upon two wheels; yet it was an inevitable necessity that a fourwheeled vehicle should ultimately have been suggested. In the first attempt to build such a vehicle the second axle was no doubt fixed to the body rigidly, in the same way as the single axle .had been. The inconveniences attending the working of such a rigid four-wheeler, and its obstinate tendency to move in a straight line, no doubt condemned the early wheelwright to much mortification and disgust, and his contemporary Jehus must often have heaped anathemas on hb head in the vain efforts to gracefully turn the corners of the gay avenues of their city drives. No doubt such disgust led for a time to the utter condemnation of the new-fangled vehicle and a return to the use of the more easily managed two-wheeled chariot. But necessity was then, as now, the mother of invention, and the perch-bolt must have been soon devised as the only means of making a four-wheeled vehicle a really practical thing on a common road. Once introduced it was sure to survive, and the carriage-maker of to-day who should propose anything for a substitute would be considered a fit candidate for an insane asylum. The railway car-builder, however, has gone back to the" original construction, hb practically straight road allowing the possibility of such a device. But this is only another case of history repeating itself. The modem iron road being entirely novel in its design implies a similar novelty in all its appurtenances. But the car-builder of a century hence will wonder that such a barbarous running gear could have been endured on a railway in 1878. The audible grinding of a railroad train on a short curve, and the wear and loss of power consequent upon the wheeb being dragged out of their natural curve, assures us that we have not yet reached perfection in railroad gear. The perch-bolt or its equivalent must be eventually employed upon the iron as well as on the] common road, and that, too, without sacrificing the steadiness of the vehicle or any other essential condition of safety and comfort.— Pacific Rural Preu.