When I was flipping through Ingram’s catalogue, I found myself stopping on two pages about Car Wheels. Just from reading a few pages in the catalogue, I have been surprised by the type of inventions displayed at these World’s Fairs. Specifically, some of the inventions are of objects that I would never use (like Emily’s post on the Ice Crusher), while others are precursors to commonplace objects that I use in my every day life (like a car tire). In 2015, car tires are taken for granted, and most people, like myself, don’t stop to think about car wheels as an “invention.” I guess everything we use today was, at some point in time, a brilliant invention that changed industries. We forget to appreciate simpler objects that were innovative and groundbreaking for their time.
I had a hard time making sense of these pages—even the term “car wheel” isn’t a term I would typically use since we now use “car tires.” Part of Ingram’s catalogue description of the car wheel made sense, such as when he described car wheels on display with different sizes, and different patterns. It was easy to understand his point that the new wheels that were displayed could be run over 200,000 miles with severe usage before needing to be replaced, in contrast to an ordinary wheel that could last only 50,000 miles.
But, Ingram’s description of car wheels was overall dense, hard to understand, and extremely technical. Because I am not that familiar with components of car wheels, I struggled to read through this paragraph and visualize what Ingram was describing. To make sense of this page, it would have been helpful if Ingram included an image or diagram, so I could read the text alongside the picture to more easily understand the structure. Additionally, some of his other descriptions were hard to picture. For example, he described “a case” with “a great number of pieces of broken wheels to show the internal grain of the rim and steel.” It would have been helpful if he gave the dimensions of this case so I could visualize what it looked like.
These pages also prompted me to see when automobiles were invented. The first modern car was built in 1885 by Karl Benz. This exhibit, therefore, truly showcased a groundbreaking innovation, and I would imagine that visitors were in awe of such an invention in machinery.
Ingram 192-193
Anthropology of the World's Fairs 
To follow up on Dr. K’s comment, I wonder if the wheels for wagons and trains differed substantially at that time. I also think it is very interesting that Ingram described the wheels very technically. Did the average reader of the Catalogue understand the information that Ingram presented? Was there a reason that Ingram made his writing more dense and difficult to read? Was Ingram aiming at a different class of Americans at the time, maybe a more educated set?
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A wonderful obscure reference to another thing we know nothing about (early forms of tires) but which can connect to some developments today. And it is another example of how difficult this stuff is to read. I suspect that these are wagon wheels or maybe even train wheels? Since as you note cars were not invented at this time, they clearly belong to some other form of transportation. By the way, there may be a lot of hype here because who would ever travel 200,000 miles on these tires whether trains or wagons?
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