“I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.”
Robert Metcalfe - inventor of Ethernet (1994)
“The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.”
Clifford Stoll - astronomist (taken from an Op-Ed in Newsweek in 1995
It was the 4th millennium BCE, and at the time the Sumerians were a stable, powerful culture, dominating an area in Western Asia called Mesopotamia. They lived along the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They subsisted on farming in this very fertile area. They cannot be credited with inventing farming - scientists now believe that agriculture erupted roughly simultaneously in 11 different areas of the world. One of them was Sumeria.
But they were good enough at it to provide them with that rare opportunity in ancient times - leisure time. No doubt there were bored Sumerians, “the Devil makes work for idle hands” Sumerians, gamer Sumerians, hobbyists, do-gooders, procrastinators, and lascivious Sumerians - human nature is what it is and when a number of people have time on their hands that time will be used in almost a limitless number of ways.
We do know for sure that some Sumerians intellectuals, some were philosophical sorts, some could envision how to make stuff that had never been made before, and some yearned to solve some problem that had bedeviled their community for decades. These people were the artists, inventors, psychologists, machinists, and historians of their day. They used their leisure time to indulge in passions of the mind.
We can be sure of this because the following list of inventions and significant extensions of knowledge can be attributed to those favored people living in modern-day Iraq:
cuneiform script,
arithmetic,
geometry,
irrigation,
saws and other tools,
sandals,
harpoons,
beer.
One can imagine that the best brewer in Sumeria had more close friends than he knew what to do with.
One other achievement should be noted. By the 4th millennium, virtually all people knew what the properties of round objects were. Undoubtedly there were crude hula hoops for children to play with. If it’s round, it rolls. But the wheel with all of its amazing properties and possibilities had not been invented. Until…
Harran and Erish started noodling over the idea of getting a round object to roll indefinitely. Harran was a 27 year old farmer; Erish was his brilliant wife. Their union hadn’t been blessed with children yet and so they combined their talents “in the round”, so to speak.
Harran thought they should try to solve the problem of how to supply the power to make this object go, should they ever invent it. Erish was more practical. “We’ve got to get this round object to run first”, she insisted. And she was right, as she often claimed to be.
They had carved out several round, similarly sized objects, miniature in size. Many in fact - they were lying all around their hut, mute testimony to their interest. One day Erish picked up two of them. She cut out a tiny hole in the centre of each and then inserted a stick that went from one to the other. She gave a push and the two rolled simultaneously. Intrigued, Harran grabbed a nearby pot that held what we now know as glue (another Sumerian invention). He used it to make a one-piece object - two rounded pieces of wood attached at their centers by a thick piece of wood.
When it was dry, they played with it and saw that this could be something of practical use. But not in miniature. Over the next week they repeated the same process, only with much bigger wooden circles and a thick solid connecting piece that rolled as the round objects did.
From there, they went to the village elder to show off their construction. He asked what each part was. Erish told him, “Well obviously the two round objects are wheels and the connector is an axle. Think about it, Dagrim. This is a new form of transportation. We now have wheels - hot wheels in fact, because the glue is still warm”. She was a quick-witted sprite.
The rest is history. Harran and Erish went on to supervise the building of the world’s first chariot - a two-wheeled one only. Harran rounded up some oxen, hooked them up crudely, and another Sumerian invention was born. Sadly, there is no word in cunieform script found to date about chariot races.
A side note:
It was two thousand years before someone thought to use hollow axles to lighten the rotation. Sometimes the wheel rolls slowly.
There are some universally acknowledged earth-shaking inventions. The wheel is one of these. Measurement of time is another. Johann Gutenberg’s printing press is a third. The steam engine vaulted England into what is now termed the Industrial Revolution, enabling that tiny island to become the dominant empire in the world. No doubt the alert reader would be able to come up with his/her own list of truly wondrous inventions that changed the world permanently.
Comparing the importance of one invention to another is a mug’s game. Inventors solve problems and there is frequently more than one road to a solution. Had the wheel not been invented, no doubt there would have been enterprising people who developed more and more useful workarounds until, say, somebody invented something like the MagLev trains in use today. Life’s possibilities expand with each invention and any invention becomes the forerunner of future refinements.