Wheel

A wheel is a circular frame turning on an axle. When the wheel spins, the object on the wheels moves more easily along the ground.

Pixabay

Man's use of the wheel changed a whole way of life. Even though the wheel is often cited as man's original invention... it wasn't invented until after boats, baskets, flutes or woven cloth, It is thought likely that wheels for carts and chariots were derived about 6,000 years ago.

Several civilisations, including the Incas and the Aztecs did pretty well without wheels.

Freely-spinning potter's wheels with a wheel and axle mechanism, were developed in Mesopotamia (Iraq) by 4200–4000. The oldest surviving example, which was found in Ur, dates to approximately 3100 BC.

The earliest evidence of a wheeled vehicle is a pictograph of a cart from the Tigris-Euphrates valley (modern day Iraq). It dates from 3500 BC; the device rolled West soon after that.

The oldest discovered wheel was found in Slovenia's Ljubljana Marshes in 2002 and it's approximately 5,150 years old. The wooden wheel belonged to a prehistoric two-wheel cart – a pushcart.

Ljubljana Marshes Wheel By Daniel Thornton

It's not the idea of the wheel that was clever but the idea of an axle. Men had probably been moving heavy objects by rolling them on logs for generations before anyone thought of slicing the log and attaching it by a means that let it roll along with the object being moved.

The wheels of the first wagons were made either from a single piece of wood or from three carved planks clamped together by transverse struts; sometimes they turned on the axle, sometimes with it.

An early wooden wheel. By John O'Neill, 

During the third millennium BC wagons acquired a regal status in addition to their practical uses. Royal tombs reveal that both wagon and oxen were valued enough to be required in the next world.

Spoked wheels appeared in the third millennium BC, when they were in use on chariots in Asia Minor. On these early vehicles the wheels either turned on an axle, or were rigidly fastened to an axle that revolved in a housing on the vehicle body. By 2000 BC heavy wheeled transport was in use in a region stretching from northern Europe to western Persia and Mesopotamia.

A depiction of an onager-drawn cart on the Sumerian "battle standard of Ur" 

The Inca and Maya had wheels on children's toys around 1500 BC, but they did not use wheels for transport. It is the only known instance of the wheel having been invented independently of the Sumerian version.

The earliest tires were bands of leather. Later a tire in the form of an iron ring was introduced that was heated in a forge fire. The expanded tire was placed over the wheel. Then on cooling it shrank and drew the members tightly together. A skilled worker, known as a wheelwright, carried out this work.

The traditional construction of the wheel in medieval Europe was to make the hub or 'knave' of elm, to resist splitting, the spokes of oak, for strength, and the felloes (sections of the rim) of ash, for toughness. An iron tire was shrunk on to give strength and resistance to wear.

The word 'truck' comes from the Greek word for wheel: 'trochos.' It first appeared in English around 1611 meaning small wheel or roller, specifically the sort mounted under cannons aboard warships.

A few hundred years ago the generally preferred method for cooking a large piece of meat evenly was to put it on a spit and rotate it until it was fully cooked. The spit was powered by the turnspit, a dog that was bred just to run for hours on a tiny wheel that turned the spit for cooking the meat.

The spoked wheel was in continued use without major modification until the 1870s, when wire-spoked wheels were invented. The wire spokes are under tension, not compression, making it possible for the wheel to be both stiff and light.

The first practical pneumatic tire was made in 1888 in Belfast by Scots-born John Boyd Dunlop. He fitted his son's tricycle wheels with inflated rubber hoses instead of solid rubber tires in order to make it more comfortable to ride on the city's bumpy roads. Dunlop's development of the pneumatic tire handily coincided with the late 19th century bicycle craze.

Dunlop's first pneumatic bicycle tyre National Museum of Scotland. By Geni 

Louis Perlman of New York was granted a patent in 1906 for "demountable tire-carrying" rims. Before Perlman's invention wheels and tires were a single unit and if the tire had a puncture, you had to replace both the tire and the wheel, even if the wheel was just fine. His demountable tires worked pretty much like the ones on your car right now. The inner rim of the tire held the tire against a groove machined into the wheel. The friction of shallow notches kept the tire from rotating on the wheel.

The Chrysler company was created by Walter P. Chrysler in 1925. Among the innovations in its early years was a wheel with a ridged rim, designed to keep a deflated tire from flying off the wheel. This wheel was eventually adopted by the auto industry worldwide.

A hamster will run as far as 5.6 miles in a night on wheel.

The phrase "touch and go", meaning a very narrow escape, is derived from driving where the wheel of one vehicle touches that of another passing without causing harm.

Sources Daily Express, The Independent, HistoryWorld, Wired

Wagon

A wagon is a four-wheeled vehicle primarily used for carrying heavy goods. They are distinguished from carts (which have two wheels) and from lighter four-wheeled vehicles primarily for carrying people, such as carriages.

Wagons are usually pulled by animals such as horses, mules or oxen. They may be pulled by one animal or by several, often in pairs or teams. However, there are examples of human-propelled wagons, such as mining corfs.

A wagon found stuck in the mud, more than 5000 years ago, near what is now Zürich in Switzerland is one of the earliest known examples of wheeled transport. It had two pairs of solid wooden wheels, each attached to an axle which turned with them. The wagon was very heavy (perhaps about two thirds of a ton, or 700 kg).

By the third millennium BC wagons had acquired a regal status in addition to their practical uses. They could transport the king on his throne at about two miles per hour in a public ceremony, but royal tombs reveal that the wagon was valued enough to be required in the next world.

The wheels of these early wagons were made either from a single piece of wood or from three joined planks; sometimes they turn on the axle, sometimes with it.

In migration and military settings, wagons were often found in large groups called wagon trains. Military use of wagon trains is ancient, the Romans built a network of roads for their armies and baggage trains to move throughout the empire.

Covered Roman wagon for tinkerwench 

The British winter of 1435 was so cold that wagons were able to ride on the River Thames as far downstream as Gravesend 21 miles (35 km) east-southeast of  London.

Wagon-ways, wooden tracks on which trolleys ran, were used in mines in Europe from the mid-16th century. By the end of the century wagon-ways were being built above ground, using either wagons with flanged wheels running on parallel wooden balks, or flangeless wheels on grooved stone blocks. The wagons were usually drawn by horses, although where the topography was suitable they were allowed to roll freely downhill under the control of a brakesman.

Iron rails for the wagon tracks were introduced at Whitehaven Colliery in Britain in 1738; cast-iron wheels also came into use around the same time.

A wagon was formerly called a wain and one who builds or repairs wagons is a wainwright.

As a common, important element in history and life, wagons have been the subjects of artwork. Some examples are the paintings The Hay Wain, The Haywain Triptych and on the Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar.

A detail of The Hay wain by John Constable. By Sailko 

As the population of the Thirteen Colonies in America grew, people migrated westward looking for inexpensive lands and new opportunities. The wagon had to carry all the supplies for the trip and all a family's personal belongings.

A significant vehicle in the development of the American west made its first appearance in 1755 when George Washington and Edward Braddock, his English commander, needed transport for their baggage train. Preparing to move an army west through the Allegheny mountains to attack the French on the Ohio river, they acquired wagons built by German settlers in the Conestoga valley in west Pennsylvania.

Pulled by four or six horses and initially designed at first purely for freight, these wagons had the unusual feature of a floor dipping to a low point in the centre to avoid the cargo shifting on rough ground. For the same reason they had large broad wheels to cope with ruts and mud.

The first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest set out on the Oregon Trail with a thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri in 1843. The Oregon Trail, which stretched 2,200 miles, was the longest of the land routes used in the Western expansion of the United States.

It took American settlers six months to reach the west coast by wagon during the 1840s.

Pioneers Crossing the Plains of Nebraska

The renowned Conestoga wagon, the backbone of any Oregon Trail playthrough, was almost never used by westward settlers as it was too heavy to pass the soft prairie trails.

Ruts leftover from the wagon trains traveling the Oregon Trial, are still visible today.

During the first presidential campaign of William Jennings Bryan in 1892, candidates for elections In the Southern states of America would parade through the streets led by a band of musicians performing on a horse-drawn wagon. As a publicity stunt, a candidate would mount the wagon as it passed through his own constituency in an effort to woo voters. From this comes the phrase "climbing the bandwagon."

The phrase "On the wagon" refers to guards taking convicts to the gallows stopped off for a drink while the condemned was kept outside on a wagon.

In 1901 the British engineer Hubert Booth patented an electrically powered machine, which he demonstrated extracting dust from carpets by suction; he called it a 'vacuum cleaner'. The machine was mounted on a horse-drawn wagon, and was equipped with a long tube for access into buildings.

During a transition to mechanized vehicles from animal powered, the term wagon was sometimes used such as with the Duryea Motor Wagon. In modern times the term Station wagon survives as a type of automobile.

Also a wagon can be the connected vehicles attached to a locomotive containing freight. (Those carrying passengers are called carriages).

Here's a list of songs about wagons.

Source Historyworld

Volvo

HISTORY

Volvo was established in 1915 as a subsidiary of SKF, a Swedish ball bearing manufacturer. The name Volvo means "I roll" in Latin, conjugated from "volvere".

The Volvo Group itself considers it started in 1927. The first Volvo car, a Volvo ÖV 4, rolled off the production line at the factory in Hisingen, Gothenburg on April 14, 1927.

OV4 1 Wikipedia

The ÖV 4 was not very successful in the Swedish climate, so the covered version, PV 4, was introduced at the end of 1928. Between 1927 and 1929 a total of 996 cars were manufactured.

The first truck, the "Series 1", debuted in January 1928. It was an immediate success and attracted attention outside Sweden.

In 1959, one of Volvo's engineers, Nils Bohlin, invented the 3-point seat belt. Instead of keeping the design proprietary and profiting from it, Volvo made the unprecedented decision to open the patent (or provide a free license) to all other car manufacturers. The company's reasoning was that the invention was so significant for road safety that it had more value as a life-saving tool than as a source of corporate profit. Volvo's guiding principle is safety, and they prioritized the saving of lives globally over financial gain

It is now a standard safety feature in all cars and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that the seat belt saves about 11,000 lives per year. .

When redesigning its seats in the 1960s, Volvo worked with orthopaedic surgeons to create a design that would reduce driving induced back pain.

Volvo was responsible for the first child-friendly car seat in 1967.

Debuting as Volvo's first widely successful sports car, the P1800 saw nearly 50,000 models roll off the production line before its 1973 finale. The car's fame was fueled by its appearance on the British TV series The Saint, driven by the pre-James Bond Roger Moore. The show aired from 1962 to 1969.

The Saint logo next to P958-X2 at Volvo Museum. By Jarvin 

Volvo renamed their Cream Yellow paint color for their 1995 850 T-5R "Faded Yellow" in Australia. This was because they knew the paint would eventually fade under the Australian sun due to the technology at the time.

In 2004, Volvo created a concept car for women in which the pedals adjusted for high heels and the headrest could accommodate a ponytail.

Ford bought the Volvo car company in 1999. In March 2010, Ford signed a deal to sell Volvo to China's biggest multinational automotive manufacturing company Geely for $1.8 billion.

Today there are two companies: Volvo Cars that produces standard size cars and Volvo Group that produces trucks, boat engines, buses and more.

FUN VOLVO FACTS

It takes and 90 hours to make a Volvo. 700 are produced in Gothenburg every day.

North Korea ordered 1,000 Volvos from Sweden in 1974 and has yet to pay it off, resulting in a debt of 2.2 billion kronor ($322 million). Every six months the company sends an invoice to Pyongyang,

Volvo's crash test cars are subject to the same machinery that tests the structural integrity of buildings during earthquakes.

Irv Gordon, a science teacher from Long Island, drove over three million miles in his Volvo P1800, which he bought in 1966. The former New York school master held a Guinness Book of World Records certification for having registered the greatest number of miles driven by an owner in one car. By the time Gordon died, on November 15, 2018, the car had driven more than 3.2 million miles. 

Irv Gordon's 1800S approaching 3,000,000 miles. By Doug Coldwell

Source Daily Mail

Volkswagen

Volkswagen is a German automaker whose headquarters are in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony.

Pixiebay

HISTORY

Austrian Ferdinand Porsche was a well-known designer for high-end vehicles and race cars. In 1934 Adolf Hitler asked his fellow Austrian to dream up a basic vehicle able to transport two adults and three children. The car needed to be able to travel at least 100 km/h, or about 60 mph, and use no more than 7 liters of gasoline for 100 kilometers (about 40 mpg). It would be available to citizens of the Third Reich through a savings plan at 990 Reichsmark ($396 in 1930s U.S. dollars).

Volkswagen ("people's car" in German) was established on May 28, 1937 by the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront) in Berlin.

The result was the Volkswagen Beetle, which was designed by Ferdinand Porsche and a team of engineers. A handful were made, but by the time the Wolfsburg factory was finished in 1938, World War II was starting and the company concentrated on making military vehicles instead.

Volkswagen was sued by the Czechoslovakian car maker Tatra before World War II because the original Beetle was so similar to the Tatra 97. Porsche was willing to settle but Hitler cancelled their proposals saying he would "would settle the matter." After Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, T97 production was stopped. After the Second World War Tatra resumed its lawsuit. In 1965 Volkswagen settled it by paying Tatra 1,000,000 DM in compensation

During World War II, a bomb landed, but didn't explode, inside the German Volkswagen factory. If it had exploded, the post-war Beetles that we commonly see would have never existed.

Mass production of the Volkswagen Beetle did not actually begin in Germany until after the war in 1945 when the United Kingdom army reopened the Wolfsburg factory.

1949 Volkswagen "split rear window" Sedan

Originally known as the Volkswagen Type 1, the car’s curves and rounded top led to its being nicknamed the 'Bug.' Volkswagen themselves started referring to the car as the VW Beetle in the late 1960s.

Americans shunned the Beetle when it was introduced in the States in 1949: Only two were sold in the first year. But after that, sales grew quickly. After six years of selling cars in the United States, the German automaker founded Volkswagen of America in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey in 1955 to standardize its dealer and service network.  By the 1960s, Beetlemania had taken off as hundreds of thousands of Bugs were sold every year, topping out at 570,000 in 1970.

Iin 1963 a VW Beetle donated by the manufacturer became the first car in the Antarctic. It proved so good for Antarctic use, being able to withstand temperatures below -50°C and winds above 150 km/h, that it was nicknamed "Red Terror" by the users.

By February 17, 1972, more than 15 million Volkswagen Beetle cars had been sold exceeding those of the Ford Model-T making it the world's most popular model.

The original Volkswagen Beetle would temporarily float on water because of a sealed steel bottom with nothing exposed beneath it. Volkswagen even created a 1972 TV ad which demonstrated its ability to float.

The last Volkswagen Beetle made in Germany left Volkswagen 's plant in Emden in 1978. Beetle production in Latin America continues until 2003.

Volkswagen presented the first-generation Golf in May 1974 as a modern front-wheel-drive, long-range replacement for the Volkswagen Beetle.

Volkswagen Golf 3-door (Europe)By Rudolf Stricker - Own work,

The Volkswagen Golf GTI debuted in 1976 a couple of years after the Golf was launched. With a souped-up engine and go-faster stripes, it became the car of choice for teens, who were soon "pimping" their rides with under-lighting and racing seats. It spawned a generation of imitators, from the Fiat Uno Turbo to the Suzuki Swift Sport.

Historically, the Golf is Volkswagen's best-selling model and is among the world's top three best-selling models, with more than 30 million built by June 2013.

When the small sedan segment started to grow in the United States at the end of the 1970s, Volkswagen realized that the hatchback body style lacked some of the appeal to those who preferred the traditional three-box configuration. Their solution was to borrow the Golf's platform, slap on a trunk, and offer it as both a coupe and a four-door sedan. The result was the 1981 MK1 Jetta, which, like its hatch sibling, was designed by Girogetto Giugiaro.

The classic Volkswagen Beetle was produced in Mexico from 1955 where it was used as a taxi. The last 'old style' Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the assembly line in Mexico in 2003. The Mexican government effectively ended the Beetle's production because street gangs would often raid two-door cars as the passenger in the back couldn't escape.

The last original Beetle, #21,529,464 was assembled and immediately retired on July 31, 2003, in Puebla, Mexico, at the Volkswagen de Mexico manufacturing plant. It can now be found at Volkswagen's AutoMuseum.

The Type 1 Beetle was in production between 1938 and 2003, a whopping 65 years, the longest a vehicle has been produced in history. 

In 1998 Volkswagen introduced the "New Beetle", built on the contemporary Golf platform with styling recalling the original Type 1. It was succeeded in 2011 by the Beetle (A5), the last variant of the Beetle. Production ceased altogether by 2019.

In September 2015, Volkswagen admitted to illegally using installed software to change emissions test results for 11 million of its diesel engine cars sold between 2009 and 2015. This resulted in engines passing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards and having vehicles emitting up to 40 times the legal limit of nitrogen oxides. It also brought into question whether VW diesel engines were actually cleaner for the environment than regular gasoline engines.

FUN VOLKSWAGEN FACTS

Many of Volkswagen's most famous models are named after winds: The Golf refers to the Gulf Stream, Passat means "trade wind," Jetta is German for "jet stream." 

Between 1973 and 1975 Volkswagen produced the Jeans Beetle, which had all-denim trim.

Children's TV presenter Peter Duncan attempted to ‘drive' over the Irish Sea in an amphibious Volkswagen Beetle for his new show Duncan Dares on March 9, 1985, but broke down and was towed to safety.

The record number of people crammed into a 1998 Volkswagen Bug and still able to close all doors is 18. They were college students.

Volkswagen owns Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, SEAT, Skoda, Ducati, MAN, and Scania.

Volkswagen was the world's largest automaker by worldwide sales in 2016 and 2017. The group's main market is in China, which delivers 40% of its sales and profits.

Sources, The Independent, Autoguide, MentalFloss

Vehicle registration plate

A vehicle registration plate is a metal or plastic plate on a motor vehicle or trailer, which is used for official identification purposes. It is also known as a number plate (British English) or a license plate (American English).

The first car registration plates were issued in France in 1893 after the Paris Police Ordinance was passed on August 14, 1893.  The plates were required for all cars and carriages in Paris, and they had to be displayed on the front and back of the vehicle. The plates were made of metal and had a white background with black lettering. They were also marked with the owner's name and address.

The Netherlands was the third country to introduce a national registration plate after France (1893) and Germany (1896).  Their national registration plate, called a "driving permit" was introduced on April 26, 1898. The first plate was issued to J. van Dam, who purchased the first Dutch-built motorcar, which was manufactured at his own Groninger Motor-Rijtuigen Fabriek.

On April 25, 1901, New York became the first state in the United States to require automobile license plates. The new law required that all motor vehicles display a unique identification number on a plate, which could be made of metal or other durable material. 

At first, American motorists were obliged to make their own license plates. Massachusetts became the first state to issue plates later in the same year. The fee for the license plate was $1, which could be obtained without waiting. 

Plates were first required  in the United Kingdom from 1 January 1904 by the Motor Car Act 1903.

When he was CEO of U.S. energy corporation Enron, Jeffrey Skilling used to drive a car with the personalised number plate wLEC, which stood for 'world's Leading Energy Company.' But the firm spectacularly collapsed in 2001 and Skilling was sentenced to 14 years in jail for fraud and insider trading.

A car number plate bearing only the number '1' sold for £7.1million at a charity auction in the United Arab Emirates in February, 2008.

Steve Jobs discovered a loophole that allowed a 6-month grace period before requiring a license plate on a leased car, Jobs would lease the same Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG every six months in order to avoid having a plate.

The state of Ohio gives out different colored license plates for those convicted of DUI.

Missouri's unofficial nickname of "Show Me State",  appears on its license plates.

Licence plates in the Canadian Northwest Territories are shaped like polar bears.

Cars with a number plate ending with 1 or 2 are not allowed on the roads on a Monday in the Philippines. Other numbers are similarly banned on other weekdays.

In 1979 a Los Angeles man named Robert Barbour  sent an application to the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) requesting personalized license plates for his car.  His choice was a plate which read "NO PLATE" Over the next several months, he received 2500 overdue traffic tickets. This was because they had all been issued to various cars with no plates, and when a car marked "NO PLATE" appeared in the system, the algorithm automatically redirected those tickets to its owner.

In late 2016 security researcher Joseph Tartaro  applied for a vanity license plate with the California DMV that said "NULL" as a joke. Because of how computers interpret that word it wreaked havoc in the system and he began to receive dozens of citations in bulk from all over the state.

If your vehicle registration plate includes the allegedly cursed number 39, people in Afghanistan might think you're a pimp. There is a belief in some parts of Afghanistan that the number 39 is cursed or a badge of shame as it is purportedly linked with prostitution.

Source Daily Express

Vehicle

A vehicle is a structure on/in which people or things are transported.

Wikipedia

A vehicle is not alive. A horse can move people and things but it is not a vehicle. A carriage drawn by a horse is.

Some vehicles have no propulsion power. Examples are balloons and gliders.

The earliest land vehicles were probably wooden sledges. Early man then began to use crude log rollers to move heavy objects. The rollers needed to be picked up from the back and put down in front again to keep the load moving.

The earliest sea-vehicles were rafts made from logs lashed together and paddled by hand.

The first self-propelled road vehicle was built by Nicholas-Joseph Cugenot in France in 1769. His fardier à vapeur was a small steam tractor to pull cannon for the army. The following year, Cugenot built a full-size version of his fardier à vapeur.

By Joe deSousa - Joseph Cugnot's 1770 Fardier à Vapeur

Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot's fardier à vapeur also had the first car crash, when it slammed into a wall in Paris.

In the early 1900s there were 100,000 horse-drawn public passenger vehicles and cabs in London, 500,000 trade vehicles and 500,000 private carriages. The medical historian Irvine Loudon observes: "The towns of England had to deal with an estimated 10 million tonnes of manure a year, and the traffic was so noisy, straw had to be placed on the roads to muffle the rattle of iron wheels on stone cobbles."

The invention of the motor car bought many advantages over horse-drawn vehicles: it took up less space, did not bolt unpredictably and produced no manure.

Source Daily Telegraph

Tram

A Tramway is a transport system in which wheeled vehicles run along parallel rails, which originated in collieries in the 18th century.

Pixiebay

The word tram is used in most territories, while within North America these vehicles are called streetcars or trolleys as they run mainly on streets.

The first horse drawn passenger streetcar in America, was the New York and Harlem Railroad developed by the Irish coach builder John Stephenson, in New York City which began service in the year 1832.

African-American teacher Elizabeth Jennings Graham insisted in 1854, on her right to ride on an available New York City streetcar at a time when all such companies mostly operated segregated cars. Her main lawyer, future president Chester A Arthur, won the case and all streetcars in New York became desegregated.

Mule-drawn streetcar, Houston, USA, 1870s

The first permanent tram line in continental Europe was opened in Paris in 1855 by French inventor Alphonse Loubat. By the 1860s horse drawn trams plied in London and Liverpool in the UK.

The Toronto tramway system was opened in 1861 as a horse tramway. The system was bought by the Toronto Railway Company in 1891 and it was electrified in 1892. Today the city operates the largest streetcar system in North America.

Streetcars in Toronto. Wikipedia

The first mechanical trams were powered by steam. The first stream tramway in England started operating in Wantage, Oxfordshire in 1875. It was created to carry passengers and goods between the Wantage and Wantage Road Station on the Great Western Railway (nearby to The Volunteer).

Two years after Werner von Siemens first demonstrated electric traction, the world's first electric tramway went into service in 1881. The 2.4 kilometres (1.5 mi) long Gross-Lichterfelde tramway ran in Lichterfelde a suburb of Berlin.

One of the first proper electric tramways of many around the world opened in Blackpool, Lancashire, England, on September 29, 1885. Unlike most of the others, it's still going.

Horsecars were largely replaced by electric-powered trams following the improvement of an overhead trolley system on trams for collecting electricity from overhead wires by Frank J. Sprague. Sprague's first electric street railway system – the Richmond Union Passenger Railway in Richmond, Virginia, began passenger operation on February 2, 1888. By 1889 110 electric railways incorporating Sprague's equipment had been begun or planned on several continents.

Postcard of electric trolley-powered streetcars of the Richmond Union Passenger Railway in 1923

The 73-year-old Catalan architect Gaudi was run over by a tram in 1926. He looked so bedraggled that bystanders took him for a tramp and were slow in getting him to hospital, where he died.

The trams in Hiroshima were back in service just three days after the atomic bomb dropped near the end of World War II.

Trams are now powered either by electric conductor rails below ground or conductor arms connected to overhead wires, but their use on public roads is very limited because of their lack of maneuverability. Greater flexibility is achieved with a trolleybus, similarly powered by conductor arms overhead, but without tracks. Both vehicles have the advantage of being non-polluting.

Melbourne, Australia has the largest tram network in the world. As of May 2017, the Melbourne tramway network consists of 250 kilometres (160 miles) of track, 493 trams, 24 routes, and 1,763 tram stops.

The world's longest single tram line is the 68 km (42 mi) one that runs almost the entire length of the Belgian coast.

Source Hutchinson Enyclopedia

Train

A train is set of connected vehicles on a railway. They contain the prime mover (either locomotive or motor unit) plus a number of coaches or carriages (for passengers) or cars or wagons (for freight). 

Pixabay

The word "train" comes from the Old French trahiner, derived from the Latin trahere meaning "to pull" or "to draw".

The first train was designed by Cornish inventor Richard Trevithick. It took its first run on the track at the Pen-y-darren ironworks in South Wales on February 21, 1804. The Penydarren locomotive managed to haul five wagons carrying 70 passengers and ten tons of iron for nine miles, reaching speeds of five miles (8 kms) per hour. On completion of the journey, Trevithick's iron mill-owning sponsor collected over £1,000 on a wager with a skeptical business rival. 

A replica of Trevithick's engine at Swansea's National Waterfront Museum Chris55

To popularize his ideas, Trevithick built a circular railway in Euston, London. Well-off spectators paid a shilling to speed past their astonished colleagues at an incredible 12 milers per hour. 

The first public railway which used only steam locomotives, all the time, was built between Liverpool and Manchester in England in 1830.

Peter Cooper was an engineer and manufacturer who designed and built the first American steam locomotive, the Tom Thumb. Although it lost a famous race with a horse-drawn train in 1830, Cooper helped advance the spread of railroads.

Wikipedia Commons

The first revenue trains in the United States begin service in 1830 on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad between Baltimore and Ellicott's Mills, both in Maryland.

Britain's first express commuter train run between London and Brighton in 1841 taking 105 minutes to complete the 59-mile journey. 

Queen Victoria became the first British monarch to travel by train on June 13, 1842. The engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel accompanied her on the inaugural royal train journey, from Slough to Paddington.

The first passenger train in India ran between Bombay (now Mumbai) and Thane on April 16, 1853. The 14-carriage train was hauled by three steam locomotives and ran for about 34 kilometers (21 miles) between these two cities carrying 400 people.

The Battle of Vienna in Virginia was a minor engagement between Union and Confederate forces on June 17, 1861, during the early days of the American Civil War. It involved one of the earliest military movements of troops by train in the world.

British trains were first given toilets, but just in the sleeping cars in 1873. 

In the 1880s, American trains featured Ladies' Lavatories, Gentlemens' Lavatories, and Immigrants' Lavatories.

Railroad competition had become so great in America by the late 19th century that the best food possible was served on dining cars regardless of cost. The Baltimore & Ohio became famous for its terrapin stew and Chesapeake Bay seafood, while the Santa Fe railroad was noted for its broiled sage hen, Mexican quail, and prairie chicken. Meals usually could be purchased for one dollar.

Two years after Werner von Siemens presented the first electric passenger train at the Berlin industrial exhibition, the world's first electric tramway went into service on May 16, 1881. The 2.4 kilometres (1.5 mi) long line started at Berlin-Lichterfelde Ost station on the Anhalt Railway line. It ran on already existing tracks that had been used for building the Prussian military academy (Hauptkadettenanstalt) at Lichterfelde West.

Lichterfelde tram, 1882

Britain's first main line electric train, operated by Lancashire and Yorkshire railway, started running between Liverpool and Southport in 1904. 

The high-speed line between Japan's two biggest cities Tokyo and Osaka was inaugurated on October 1, 1964; the famous Shinkansen 'bullet train' (named for its shape) could reach a speed of 210 kmph (130 mph). 

The distinctive nose of the Shinkansen 500 bullet train prevents sonic booms whenever it exits a tunnel. It was discovered when scientists studied the shape of a kingfisher's beak to learn how it hit the water at high speed

Tōkaidō Shinkansen made its first service in 1964.By DRAGONBALLXYZ

A powerful new "bullet train" service was launched in Japan in 1997, achieving the world's fastest average speed on a commercial run of 151.4 miles an hour.

France’s TGV, which began running in 1981, debuted with a top speed of 270 km/h  (168 mph) that dwarfed the Shinkansen’s 210 km/h. The country's intercity rail service established France as the leader in high-speed train technology. 

In 2007 a French TGV train on the LGV Est high speed line set an official new world speed record for a commercial train on steel wheels. It achieved a speed of 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph) on April 3, 2007 at kilometer point 191 near the village of Le Chemin, between the Meuse and Champagne-Ardenne TGV stations. 

The world record for the maximum speed attained by a passenger train is held by Japan's experimental maglev train L0 Series, which achieved 603 km/h (375 mph) on a 42.8 km magnetic-levitation track on April 21, 2015. Picture below shows a JR Central L0 series 5-car maglev train undergoing test-running on the Yamanashi Test Track

By Saruno Hirobano - Own work, 

The Japanese Bullet Train is cleaned in just seven minutes and prepared for the next passengers so that including disembarking and boarding, the train stops for only 12 minutes. 

In over five decades and 10 billion passengers, the Japanese bullet train has never had a single passenger fatality caused by a derailment or collision.

Source Daily Telegraph Right Now June 12, 2004

Toyota

While still a department of Toyota Industries, Toyota created its first product, the Type A engine in 1934, and its first passenger car in 1936, the Toyota AA.

Toyota Standard Sedan AA 1936. By BsBsBs

Toyota Motors was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda on August 28, 1937, as a spinoff from his father's company Toyota Industries to create automobiles.

The first vehicles were originally sold under the name "Toyoda"  from the family name of Kiichirō Toyoda. In 1936 the company decided for a new name and held a competition. Toyota was chosen out of the 27,000 entries because the number of strokes to write Toyota in Japanese (eight) was thought to bring luck and prosperity.

The Toyota Land Cruiser originated after the Imperial Japanese Army captured an American Jeep during World War II and ordered Toyota to reverse-engineer it. 

Introduced in 1966, the Toyota Corolla was the first mass-market car to have a radio fitted as standard. 

The Toyota Corolla was also the first Japanese car to threaten the American and European dominance of the industry, thanks to its efficiency. The Corolla was the best-selling motor vehicle worldwide by 1974 and has continued since then to be one of the best-selling cars in the world. 

The first commercial hybrid car, the Toyota Prius, first went on sale in Japan on December 10, 1997 and was launched worldwide three years later. 

The first Prius, model NHW10. By Benespit 

Since becoming fashionable among ecologically aware Hollywood celebrities the Toyota Prius has inspired a legion of impressionable "civilian" consumers to follow suit. Toyota Motor Company announced on March 11, 2009 it had sold over 1 million gas-electric hybrid vehicles in the U.S.

As of January 2017, the Prius liftback is the world's top selling hybrid car with almost 4 million units sold.

A Swiss couple Emil and Liliana Schmid have earned their place in the Guinness Book of Records for the longest driven journey in the same car. As of April 4, 2017 they had driven 741,065 km (460,476 miles) and traveled across 186 countries in the same Toyota Land Cruiser in a journey that started on October 18, 1984 and is still ongoing.

Today the Toyota Motor Corporation produces vehicles under five brands - the Toyota brand, Hino, Lexus, Ranz, and Daihatsu.

Toyota is the largest automobile manufacturer (by production) ahead of the Volkswagen Group and General Motors. In 2012 Toyota became the world's first automobile manufacturer to produce more than 10 million vehicles per year.

In 2017, Toyota's corporate structure consisted of 364,445 employees worldwide and, as of October 2016, it was the fifth-largest company in the world by revenue.

Toyota Motor unseated General Motors as the top-selling automaker in the United States in 2021, becoming the first manufacturer based outside the country to achieve that feat in the industry’s history.

The Toyota Supra which Brian drives at the end of Furious 7 actually belonged to the late actor Paul Walker.

Source The Independent

Tire (or Tyre)

A tire (American English) or tyre (British English) is a ring of material that covers the rim of a bicycle and motor vehicle wheels.

The term "tire" comes from the word "attire", from the idea that a wheel with a tire is a dressed wheel.

Pixiebay

HISTORY

Back when carriages relied on real horse-power and bicycles weighed a ton, travelers were forced to endure bone-jarring rides over the bumps and potholes of the nation's primitive roads. Scottish railway engineer Robert Thomson saw the potential of air to soften the way and on December 10, 1845, he patented the use of pneumatic leather tires on bikes. However, his invention was deemed too expensive to mass-produce.

Abert Thomson's obituary in The Illustrated London News of 29 March 1873

In 1888, a Scottish veterinary surgeon called John Dunlop, who had a flourishing practice near Belfast, fitted his son's tricycle wheels with inflated rubber hoses instead of solid rubber tires in order to make it more comfortable to ride on the bumpy roads. 

Dunlop's development of the pneumatic tire handily coincided with the new bicycle craze and when a cyclist using the 'Dunlop Pneumatic Tyres' won a race in Belfast a year later, the pneumatic cycle tire was on its way.

Dunlop's first pneumatic bicycle tyre National Museum of Scotland. By Geni 

His company, formed in 1889, became known as the Dunlop Rubber Co in 1900.

Originally tires were a gray-white or light and translucent-beige color as a byproduct of Zinc Oxide being added to the rubber to add strength. Black tires only started being made after 1912 when, Binney & Smith began selling their carbon black chemicals to Goodrich Tire Company. This was because they found that the use of carbon black in rubber manufacturing significantly increased the longevity of rubber intended to be turned into tires. 

Two brothers, Édouard Michelin and André Michelin, ran a rubber factory in Clermont-Ferrand, France. The brothers were enthusiastic about the pneumatic tyre, and worked on creating their own version, one that did not need to be glued to the rim. Michelin was incorporated on May 28, 1889. 

In 1891 Michelin took out its first patent for a detachable pneumatic tyre on a metal rim, which was used by Charles Terront to win the world's first long distance cycle race, the 1891 Paris–Brest–Paris.

The Michelin man is known as Mr Bib. His name was Bibendum in the company's first adverts in 1896. The reason he's white is because he was created before carbon was added as a preservative and a strengthener to the basic rubber material. 

An 1898 poster by "O'Galop" of Bibendum, the Michelin Man

It wasn't until 1912 that companies started mixing carbon chemicals with the rubber to make black tires. This process is not an aesthetic change, but a structural one, making the tires stronger and durable.

Michelin developed and patented in 1946 a key innovation in tire history, the radial tire.

Michelin owned the leading automaker Citroën, so it was quickly able to introduce its new design, including on the new 1948 Citroën 2CV model. Because of its significant advantages in durability and fuel economy, this technology spread quickly in Europe and Asia in the 1950s and 1960s and enabled Michelin to become one of the worlds leading tire manufacturers.

FUN TIRE FACTS

LEGO, which is the largest toy company in the world, also makes more than 300 million rubber tires a year — making it the biggest manufacturer of tires, too. The second largest tire company, Michelin, produces only 170 million a year.

Formula One teams don’t own their tires, and at the end of each race teams have to return the tires to Pirelli. Even used tires must be returned to prevent industrial espionage.

The tiny bits of rubber sticking out of tires are called "nubbins" and they formed in the holes used to pump rubber into the tire mold.

The World's Largest Tire currently resides in Allen Park, Michigan. This 12 ton, 80-foot-tall beast is built to withstand hurricane force winds, and served as a Ferris wheel (and a huge advertisement for Uniroyal) at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair.

The Flat Tire Alarm, patented in the US,  is a steel spring device which, when fastened to each wheel on a car, makes a loud clacking noise if a tire looses too much air.

A car tire rotates 32,000,000 times in its average lifetime.

Airplane tires leave between 1 to 1.5 pounds of rubber on the runway when they land.