Page:The Kinematics of Machinery.djvu/232

 210 KINEMATICS OF MACHINERY.

(X. 89, 4) The mighty Indra supports the heaven and earth

Separating them like two wheels upon their axle. ..

and in another passage :

(VIII. 6, 83) As the wheel behind the horse, so behind thee roll both worlds. ..

and again in describing day and night :

(I, 185, 2) The Day and Night turn like two wheels,

Their own power supports the Universe. . . These two, themselves un-moving, foot-less, Have moving, footed spokes innumerable. ..

and so on, many passages showing that already great attention had been given to the decoration of vehicles and to the breeding of horses. From this free use in poetry of the image of a wheeled carriage we must conclude that such vehicles were already of great age at the time at which the Vedas were written, more than 1700 years B.O.

Thus if we trace all its intermediate steps we find the use of the carriage going even further and further back into the dim times before the historic period, to change the darkness of which even into twilight we have only the single torch of philological research ; and this research points to the conclusion that the original part of the carriage was not the framework or body, and that the whole has been built up from the rolling piece, the wheel itself. 81 The gradual development may have taken place from the circular tree- trunk placed as a roller under a load, to which the disc-shaped wheel, and especially the Formosan pair of wheels, stand very near. 82 However this may be, the use of the carriage extends back to the very beginnings of civilisation, to the time when men first lived in villages of their own building, and it ranks therefore among the most primitive inventions of the human race,

The kind of boring apparatus which we have described extended itself into historic times. Homer gives us (Od. ix. 384 et seq.) a clear description of it :

"I standing above them,

Bored it into the hole : as a shipwright boreth a timber, Guiding the drill that his men below drive backward and forward, Pulling the ends of the thong while the point runs round without ceasing."

This method of working, used by the ancient carpenters and obviously very common in the Homeric times, required three