The Wheel Trivia
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49 free The Wheel trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Nobody knows who invented the wheel, but we know a lot about where it turned up first, and this quiz covers it: the 5,200-year-old ash wheel from a Slovenian marsh, the wagon scratched onto a Polish pot, Uruk's clay tablets, the steppe culture that built the first spoked wheels and chariots, and the puzzle of why the Americas made wheeled toys for children but never a cart. From there it rolls through everything the basic idea became: potter's wheels and spinning wheels, wheelwrights' felloes and naves, wire spokes under tension, the vet who made the first practical pneumatic tyre, the tiller that came before the steering wheel, and the bridge engineer who built a 264-foot wheel to out-do the Eiffel Tower. There is also a run on the wheel as a symbol, from Fortuna to the flag of India. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the wheel, its parts, and the specific finds and inventions named, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. For more on how things get made, try our Inventions quiz.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The wheel and axle is one of how many classical simple machines?
Six
Six: none of them creates energy, so any that eases the force you need makes you push over a longer distance instead.
Q 02Why did department stores first turn away Bernard Sadow's wheeled suitcase?
It seemed unmanly
It seemed unmanly: Sadow recalled a 'macho feeling' at the time, when men were expected to carry luggage for their wives.
Q 03The English word 'wheel' shares a Proto-Indo-European root with which Sanskrit word for 'circle'?
Chakra
Chakra: the seven chakras familiar from yoga are only one tradition's version; older texts counted four, five, six or even more.
Q 04Found in a Slovenian marsh in 2002, the Ljubljana Marshes Wheel is older than which of these?
The Great Pyramid
The Great Pyramid: the wheel was locked onto its axle, so rather than spinning around the axle, wheel and axle turned together.
Q 05Which saint's legendary torture wheel shattered at her touch, giving a spinning firework its name?
Saint Catherine
Saint Catherine of Alexandria, legend says, was bound to a spiked wheel that broke when she touched it, so her persecutors beheaded her instead.
Q 06What kind of vehicle is scratched five times onto the Bronocice pot?
A four-wheeled wagon with a shaft
A four-wheeled wagon with a shaft: the shaft forks into a V, probably a yoke, which suggests the wagon was pulled by a pair of animals.
Q 07Pictographs of wheeled vehicles from about 3500 BCE come from which Sumerian city, where legend says Gilgamesh ruled?
Uruk
Uruk's pictographs are about as old as drawings of wheeled vehicles from Europe, so experts cannot say for sure where the wheel began.
Q 08What were the earliest wheels on carts and wagons?
Solid wooden disks with an axle hole
Solid wooden disks with an axle hole came first; slices across a trunk made weak wheels, so better ones were shaped from planks held together by cross-bars.
Q 09Which Old Testament prophet described a vision of 'a wheel in the middle of a wheel'?
Ezekiel
Ezekiel saw wheels with rims 'full of eyes' that went wherever four living creatures went, because the creatures' spirit was in the wheels.
Q 10The wagon-wheel effect is an illusion that makes a fast-spinning wheel on film appear to do what?
Spin backwards
Spin backwards: film catches separate frames, yet people also see the effect in continuous daylight, and scientists have argued over why.
Q 11The high-wheeled bicycle called the penny-farthing got its nickname from what?
Two British coins
Two British coins: a big penny beside a small farthing, like its wheels; the pedals turned the front wheel directly, so a bigger wheel meant more speed.
Q 12Before European contact, the few wheels found in the Americas are usually identified as what?
Children's toys
Children's toys is the usual reading of the small wheeled animal figures from Mexico, yet no cart, barrow or potter's wheel was put to use there before the 16th century.
Q 13What is often given as the main reason the pre-Columbian Americas never used wheeled transport?
Q 21What was the Greek equivalent of Fortuna, the Roman goddess who spins the wheel of fate?
Tyche
Tyche had an old temple at Argos where the legendary hero Palamedes is said to have dedicated the dice he invented to the goddess of chance.
Q 22Which ancient engineer, famous for a steam-spun sphere, listed the wheel and axle among machines for lifting?
Hero of Alexandria
Hero of Alexandria's aeolipile spun because steam escaping from its bent nozzles pushed the ball round.
Q 23In Greek myth, who was bound to a wheel as punishment for lusting after Hera, wife of Zeus?
Ixion
Ixion: Zeus shaped a cloud in Hera's likeness to trick him, and Ixion lay with the fake before being chained to the wheel.
No large domesticated draft animals
No large domesticated draft animals: bison were never domesticated and the native horses had died out, so nothing was available to pull a cart.
Q 14Which mantra is commonly written on Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheels?
Om mani padme hum
Om mani padme hum: each turn is believed to count as reading it aloud once for every copy on the scroll inside, so more copies mean more merit.
Q 15Wheel tracks from about 2200 BCE at Pingliangtai are the earliest evidence of wheeled vehicles in which country?
China
The vehicles were introduced from the west; the country's oldest spoked-wheel hubs come from Qinghai.
Q 16A winged wheel standing for progress appears on the coat of arms of which Central American country?
Panama
Panama's arms also show the sun setting as the moon rises, marking the evening hour of its separation from Colombia on 3 November 1903.
Q 17Besides India, which traditionally nomadic people put a wheel on their flag as a nod to their Indian origins?
The Romani
The Romani flag was endorsed at the first World Romani Congress near London, and International Romani Day on 8 April now honours that meeting.
Q 18India's flag features a wheel linked to which ancient emperor?
Ashoka
Ashoka: Radhakrishnan told India's Constituent Assembly the wheel denotes motion, because there is death in stagnation and life in movement.
Q 19In Buddhist tradition, an eight-spoked dharma wheel represents what?
The Noble Eightfold Path
The Noble Eightfold Path: the Buddha taught that path in his first sermon, which is said to have set the wheel of dharma turning.
Q 20The medieval Wheel of Fortune image was popularised by which early-6th-century book?
Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy
Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy was written in prison as he awaited execution, and in it Fortune says she turns her wheel to bring the high down and raise the low.
Q 24Which inventor, seeking the lightest possible wheel for a flying machine, did away with wooden spokes altogether?
George Cayley
George Cayley never patented his idea, and in 1826 the first patent for a wire wheel went to Theodore Jones of London instead.
Q 25Unlike wooden spokes, wire spokes carry loads in which way?
Under tension
Under tension: because the spokes only pull, thin metal wires could replace heavy wooden spokes, giving bicycles far lighter wheels.
Q 26Why were iron tyres fitted hot?
It shrank tight
It shrank tight: the cooling iron pulled the spokes firmly into their joints, making the whole wheel stronger and more rigid.
Q 27Which word names both the hub of a wooden wheel and the main body of a church?
The nave
The nave: wheelwrights usually made a wheel's nave from elm, a wood valued because its interlocked grain makes it very hard to split.
Q 28Before iron tyres, early chariot wheels were bound with which material?
Rawhide
Rawhide came first; later, iron strakes nailed on in sections let wheelwrights shoe a wheel without a blacksmith's help.
Q 29Which people are generally credited with bringing the horse-drawn chariot into Egypt?
The Hyksos
The Hyksos, though some scholars dispute it; Egypt's first recorded chariot battles came in the wars that drove the Hyksos out.
Q 30Napoleon took the chariot statue from which Berlin landmark?
Brandenburg Gate
Brandenburg Gate: its quadriga was hauled to Paris as war booty and returned to Berlin only after Napoleon's defeat in 1814.