Wheels, Treadmills and Roundabouts

A wheel rotates around an axis. That rotation may carry a vehicle along a road, drive another mechanism or continue without taking the wheel's centre anywhere. A treadmill supplies a moving surface beneath its user, while a roundabout organises movement around a central point.

These arrangements provide different ways of describing repetition and progress. A part can return to its starting position during each revolution while the larger system moves forwards. Repeated movement can also continue within a fixed location.

Travel to another position and return to a starting point both involve movement. A completed circuit has no net change of position. Original diagram, CC0.

Types and Characteristics

• Vehicle wheels: Rotate as a vehicle moves, although a wheel can spin without gaining useful traction.
• Gears: Toothed wheels that transfer rotation between parts of a mechanism.
• Flywheels: Rotating masses used to store energy and reduce changes in rotational speed.
• Treadmills: Present a moving belt or succession of steps that a user walks or runs upon.
• Treadwheels: Large wheels turned by the stepping or walking of a person or animal.
• Road roundabouts: Arrange traffic around a central island, with routes leading on and off the circulating roadway.
• Playground roundabouts: Carry riders around an axis while the apparatus remains in one place.

The movement of the mechanism and the destination of its user need separate descriptions. A wheel may work exactly as intended while taking its vehicle towards an unwanted destination. A treadmill can likewise serve its intended purpose without carrying the runner across the room.

Historical Background

The Science Museum Group holds an 1823 instrument made by Robert Brettell Bate for calculating treadwheel labour. Its scales include steps per minute and feet of ascent. The museum describes the treadwheel as a common form of punishment in nineteenth-century prisons. Science Museum Group: Treadwheel Labour Calculator

The object records an arrangement in which exertion could be measured as an equivalent ascent even though the prisoner remained on a wheel. It gives historical substance to the later everyday image of repetitive labour on a treadmill.

Literary Examples

In Chapter II of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, Alice runs with the Red Queen and discovers that they have remained beside the same tree. The Queen explains the unusual relationship between running and staying in place in that country. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass

The episode separates effort, speed and change of position. It also makes those relationships dependent on the world in which the characters are moving. Alice's expectations come from one setting, while the Queen describes the rules of another.

The Red Queen explains why prolonged running has not taken Alice away from the tree:

it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

Excerpt from the Red Queen’s speech, Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter II, “The Garden of Live Flowers”.

The Queen makes exertion a condition of maintaining a position. In Alice’s account of her own country, the same duration and speed would produce a change of place. The disagreement therefore concerns the relation between action and its setting, rather than a simple judgement that the runner is lazy or inefficient. A treadmill gives a physical comparison because movement underfoot can coexist with staying in the room, although Carroll’s scene contains no literal treadmill. When using the allusion, identify what must be maintained and what would count as reaching somewhere else.

Idioms

• Spin your wheels: Expend effort without making useful progress.
• Set the wheels in motion: Begin a process that will continue through further stages.
• A cog in the machine: A person with a limited role within a larger organisation or system.
• Reinvent the wheel: Spend effort recreating something that already exists.
• Get into gear: Begin working or operating effectively.
• Go round in circles: Repeat activity or discussion without resolving the matter.
• The daily treadmill: A repetitive routine of work or obligations.
• Swings and roundabouts: A situation in which advantages and disadvantages tend to balance out.
• Put a spoke in someone's wheel: Obstruct another person's plans or progress.
• Come full circle: Return to an earlier position or condition after a series of changes.

Homophones

Roll / role: Roll describes movement by turning over or around. Role describes a function, responsibility or part played by someone.

Brake / break: A brake slows or stops movement. A break can be an interruption, separation or fracture.

Related Pages

Cars, Trains, Feet and Ankles, Burdens, Chess.

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