DISINVENTING THE WHEEL...

No, the wheel is not one of man's crucial inventions. Rolling heavy loads on tree trunks was a fairly simple idea, nowhere near comparable to the taming of fire which (above all) extended the human animal's nutritional niche to foods that could be detoxified and made chewable. Nor did it have the significance of discovering agriculture and animal husbandry, which enabled man to produce what he needed rather than hunt for what was available¾and to produce more than he consumed.

The way to accomplish this is to redesign a common type of electric motor. Its stator normally produces a magnetic field traveling round the circumference, while its rotor¾a cage-like conductor unconnected to any electric supply¾rotates by chasing the attraction of the field that is ever unreachably before it, much like congressional orators chase a balanced budget, except that the rotor performs work on the way. In the "linear" motor, the stator is unrolled into a railroad track, and the rotor is replaced by a railcar.

As the car chases the elusive magnetic field, it is held in suspension above the track either by magnetically repelling the top of the bracket on which the car is mounted, or preferably (for reasons of stability) by a its bottom, as is the case for the "Transrapid 06," shown in the figure. It runs on an experimental track of the Federal German Railroads¾or perhaps one should say "flies" over it, for while it is in motion, the train hovers 1cm (about 3/8") above the track without touching it.