The western variant does not necessarily save the driver only half the weight, this depends on how the wheelbarrow is loaded. In the standard arrangement, with handles extending out towards the driver, and the wheelbarrow tipping forwards forcing most of the weight to the front, I could see 3/4 of the weight being offloaded to the wheel. While it still loses to the chinese variant, the trade off is that the "barrow" portion of the wheelbarrow can carry loose items, including dirt or even water, whereas the chinese design requires items to be in bags, which are then tied down. Also, anyone who has ever driven a well loaded wheelbarrow knows that they have a considerable danger of tipping, and I think this would be accentuated in the chinese design. Placing most of the weight near the axle between the wheel and the ground means that any slight tendency towards one side (say by an imbalance while loading, or a bump in the road) is more easily corrected for in the western design.
I wonder if we might liken this to the distinction between the chinese preference for energy saving and the british preference for labour saving, as recorded during the industrial revolution. A chinese wheelbarrow will require much more time to load, and will require more care on behalf of the driver to prevent it tipping, but will require less energy of them. The western variant can be loaded quickly (perhaps with a shovel), but requires the driver to bear some portion of the weight, and thereby use more energy.
It is a completely different "intended usage", however.
The "western" version is intended to move materials over extremely short paths (for long distance carriages are traditionally used), the Chinese is to carry materials over long distances (and as mentioned in the article over winding and possibly non-paved roads).
You can loosely compare the "loading" with a modern quarry/mine truck vs. a container truck, besides the different nature of the goods transported the difference is between short and long haul that more than compensates the increased loading time.
the "barrow" portion of the wheelbarrow can carry loose items, including dirt or even water
Here I believe you are confounding a hollow body with central wheel placement, these are two disparate and potentially mutually compatible features.
anyone who has ever driven a well loaded wheelbarrow knows that they have a considerable danger of tipping, and I think this would be accentuated in the chinese design
If intended for heavy loads they tend to have stands emerging from the outer sides/corners (these are visible in many of the article's images), just the same as the modern ones. Also, because the weight is better balanced in the Chinese central-wheel model you can arguably use a fatter wheel (since you are taking less load and therefore have an easier time controlling the thing) which means increased stability and increased strength and longevity. Also, reduced affinity for 'sinking' in muddy or sandy conditions.
Placing most of the weight near the axle between the wheel and the ground
One observation is that the Chinese design (central placement of larger wheel) makes this possible with a higher center of gravity (and therefore easier to guide, while avoiding undesirable interactions of the load with plants/water/animals/etc.). A concern in wet weather, overgrown paths, etc.
A chinese wheelbarrow will require much more time to load
I believe this is a misconception based upon the view of the modern western wheelbarrow which is designed both as a vessel and a vehicle. Coming from an ancient Chinese peasant's perspective, the wheelbarrow would be an all-weather replacement for pack animals, and therefore the likelihood is that goods (for example agricultural harvests) would first be placed in to an appropriate container and then slung over the wheelbarrow in paired or otherwise balanced loads. The slinging would not require any real time investment, probably less than an animal. It means that you can bring the wheelbarrow down a winding path in mountainous fields, take your rattan or similar basket, load your harvest, and then dump it on the wheelbarrow. You might load 4, 6, 8 or 10 such baskets before moving the wheelbarrow. The above assumptions are based on my own observations observing actual agricultural work in remoter parts of China and Southeast Asia over the last 20 years.
Strangely, this whole discussion reminds me of the outrageously expensive industry of modern baby strollers, but also the modern stand-on electric monowheel style scooters, which could be said to be essentially a powered version of the simplistic form of the Chinese wheelbarrow.
> The wheelbarrow gave the Chinese armies such an advantage in moving goods that it was kept secret - early Chinese writings talk about wheelbarrows in code.
It's strange to think that the wheelbarrow was at one time super high tech and a game changer for military operations.
Added to my list of inventions I'll steal if I ever time travel :)
>People are clever everywhere. Such a good idea would have gotten adopted if it were useful.
First I thought of Democracy which is not used in China and a clear counterexample. Clearly it's not the dry weather there which is the reason :).
But I deleted that comment as it's political and, although a counterexample, one could argue that the algorithm of counting votes is not the central idea of Democracy, and it is philosophical and cultural rather than technological.
I next thought simply of forks and chopsticks. They're both wildly available, but other than Asians, nobody eats with chopsticks in America and Europe, non-Asian restaurants don't even have any. In China I imagine it's the opposite, and restaurants don't even have a fork for you.
We are not talking about a wheelbarrow here (or Democracy!) - but just a $0.50 piece of wood/plastic/metal.
Clearly it is not true that a good idea is adopted instantly in the same form. Utensils are a great idea. The west uses forks, the East uses chopsticks.
> Utensils are a great idea. The west uses forks, the East uses chopsticks.
Cultures have very different foods. My uninformed guess is that foods and utensils evolved side-by-side. The west doesn't use chopsticks because most food wouldn't benefit from being eaten with chopsticks.
they have fork and spoon everywhere in Chinese restaurants, what can be hard to find it's knife
also most of Asia doesn't eat with chopsticks except few eastern Asian countries, heck whole southeast Asia it's fork+spoon for most of the dishes, it's just strange CN/JP/KR preference
well i lived there for years, honestly i don't have problem to eat with chopsticks, after all i think i am better with them than my wife who used them since birth, but spoon is quite usual item in any restaurant, forks maybe not that common though when i need them for visitors that always had them
after all you think all those instant noodles sold in shops are eaten with chopsticks instead folding fork which it's in package? it's not like fork it's some strange concept for Chinese. every Chinese eat instant noodles more or less, majority of them eat them often with fork (when on train or traveling elsewhere)
but yeah all dishes from food delivery are accompanied by cheap short bamboo chopsticks
> after all you think all those instant noodles sold in shops are eaten with chopsticks instead folding fork which it's in package
That's interesting, in Japan you get chopsticks with your instant noodles (although they're put in your bag by the check-out staff, not included in the package)
At any rate we can agree that the point has been made. It's not like you need some external factor (prove that the reason for this is the fact that Japan is an island, or any other thing.)
China doesn't need to be "drier" to make the Chinese wheelbarrow we're reading about more useful, with the idea that the wheelbarrow difference can be explained in full by the presence of mud in the west.
You don't need any difference like that. It can just be a cultural map of adoption, with no real reason for it.
That was my whole point! That the Chinese certainly know about it. All Americans and Europeans have easy access to chopsticks, too, and access to the knowledge to use them. Yet adoption is just different.
You just proved my point from the other direction, because in America ramen noodles certainly don't come with a fork, it's not how they're eaten.
>after all you think all those instant noodles sold in shops are eaten with chopsticks instead folding fork which it's in package? it's not like fork it's some strange concept for Chinese. every Chinese eat instant noodles more or less, majority of them eat them often with fork (when on train or traveling elsewhere)
If you look at how I started this thread, it was just as a counterexample to the poster bsder, so we can just stick to agreeing that the "same" or similar technologies see different maps of adoption for no real inherent reason. In America nobody eats ramen noodles with a fork, amd they never come with a fork.
>The Chinese and Roman road systems were built (independently) over the course of five centuries during the same period in history. Curiously, due to (unrelated) political reasons, both systems also started to disintegrate side by side from the third century AD onwards
All ancient societies were Malthusian, living at the limit of their food supplies. A period of global cooling started in the third century, knocking down the Roman and Chinese empires at the same time, for the same reason: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/12/famine-fever-and-the-fal...
> Before the arrival of the steam engine, people have always preferred to move cargo over water instead of over land
People have always preferred moving cargo over water than land period, that's still the case today. Steam and combustion engines made overland transport faster and more flexible and thus took over some of the more time-sensitive transport, but the bulk of manufactured chinese goods don't travel to europe or the middle-east overland, neither do central and south-american goods to the US or canada.
how it's this better than two wheeled cart, which is much more stable? this has benefit only on very narrow paths somewhere in mountains/forest, but otherwise carts are superior, you don't need to balance them, so I can see why this never took off outside China since there is obviously better solution to this problem
Narrower paths are significantly cheaper to build and maintain. The article has some images of the narrow paths used. A single track vehicle is more usable on bad roads of any width. Such vehicles only need to dodge the potholes and dropoffs that would cause extra energy use and might be entirely impassible to a multi-track vehicle.
This sort of effect is seen with bicycles in urban areas. A single narrow broken kerb can create a new bicycle route where there was none before. This superiority of single track vehicles is sometimes used intentionally as a filter to allow the passage of bicycles and prevent the passage of cars. In my city there are raised medians on some bicycle routes with a pair of narrow cuts (for 2 way bike traffic) to allow the passage of the intended traffic across a road without creating another route usable by cars and trucks.
Maybe initially, but like any skill, practice makes perfect. Considering the distances traveled and loads carried (up to 6 people!), I would guess the average Chinese wheelbarrower learns rather quickly how to not drop goods/people. It would be interesting to know how often accidents happen with the Chinese vs the European versions though. My experience says that European/US wheelbarrows are just as, if not more easily tipped when fully loaded. I've seen it happen often enough and I've had it happen to me.
Regarding maximum load, the article states:
> In other words, when the load is 100 kg, the operator of a European wheelbarrow carries a load of 50 kg while the operator of a Chinese wheelbarrow carries nothing. He (or she) only has to push or pull, and steer.
except i was talking about two wheeled cart, not European wheelbarrow regarding load
and one wheeled will be never as stable as two wheeled no matter what are your skills, you need to balance it in all directions while two wheeled need to be balanced only in two directions
According to Richard Bulliet's History of the World lectures (available online), four-wheeled wagons are globally less common than wheelbarrows or two-wheeled carts because:
(a) extra wheels add considerable weight and friction
(b) wagons have a larger turn radius (See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagon_wheel_(transportation)#T...)
TFA answers the question "why a wheelbarrow and not a two-wheeled cart": "Compared to a two-wheeled cart or a four-wheeled wagon, a wheelbarrow was much cheaper to build because wheel construction was a labour-intensive job. Although the wheelbarrow required a road, a very narrow path (about as wide as the wheel) sufficed, and it could be bumpy."
It's true that the eastern and western wheelbarrows were different, but the Chinese also used "western"-style wheelbarrows for moving bulk materials short distances on construction sites, whereas we had no equivalent of their wheelbarrow for longer distance travel. Sounds like they won there.
As for adding more wheels, why? You're just adding more weight. Keep in mind that these need to be pushable by a single person. A single large wheel is the best design for handling rough terrain and optimizing maneuverability, while still being pushable by one person. By the time you've added multiple wheels you're talking about a larger type of vehicle that needs better roads and draft animals to pull it.
The article says: "Compared to a two-wheeled cart or a four-wheeled wagon, a wheelbarrow was much cheaper to build because wheel construction was a labour-intensive job."
"Our road infrastructure - mostly based on asphalt - is more similar to that of the Ancient Chinese and will disintegrate at a much faster rate if we lose our ability to maintain it. The Chinese wheelbarrow - and with it many other forgotten low-tech transportation options - might one day come in very handy again."
It's funny how such intelligent and thoughtful people can write a serious article topped off by this. At first I think it's tongue-in-cheek humour, but then I realize, no, they're half-serious.
I should add - this is a great magazine, nice find!
I don't think it's crazy to suggest that roads and the standard of living in some places could decline to the point that it becomes more common to use currently-outmoded methods to transport goods over land. What if the future sees:
- Oil production decline to the point of significant scarcity
- 20000km supply chains falling out of the profitability zone
Given enough neglect and time, everything we have built will crumble. When "developed" places fail, they will start to look more like "developing" places. Dirt roads, bicycles, working animals, reduced conspicuous consumption, and maybe even wheelbarrows as a seriously-considered form of transportation - all of it could return in the long-term.
Every civilization that has existed prior to the modern age has fallen. And unlike them, we're now destroying the planet's very ability to support life as well.
It's a deadly serious matter whether human civilization can continue in its present form, and if it does not, it's worth considering what it might fall back to. It's happened many times before.
"Every civilization that has existed prior to the modern age has fallen"
No. Though every political organization has fallen, a great deal of the social and local political infrastructure remained the same, moreover, almost every political organization ever founded is an evolution of the one previous to it.
Do you really think that Sicily changed political hands prevented them from knowing how to 'build Roman roads' if they wanted to?
"we're now destroying the planet's very ability to support life as well."
Our roads will be fine, and no, we don't need to reconsider 1- wheeled carts, 'just in case'.
I wonder if we might liken this to the distinction between the chinese preference for energy saving and the british preference for labour saving, as recorded during the industrial revolution. A chinese wheelbarrow will require much more time to load, and will require more care on behalf of the driver to prevent it tipping, but will require less energy of them. The western variant can be loaded quickly (perhaps with a shovel), but requires the driver to bear some portion of the weight, and thereby use more energy.