Sam Arant, age i0, of Ft. Motte, S.C., for his question:

Who invented the potter's wheel?

Chances are it was invented by some lazy fellow to save himself work. But his potter's wheel was a great advance in the making of pottery. It was, in fact, one of the great inventions of all time. However, the early potters may have thought it was just a gadget to make better pots in less time with less work.

If you had to make your own clay cooking pots, sooner or later you would invent the potter's wheel. It was invented again and again by early tribes in the Middle east, in India and faraway China. All this happened thousands of years ago, before recorded history. We cannot say who invented it, but settled communities were using potter's wheels in the Bronze Age of pre history.

The earliest potters shaped their models by scooping the middle from a ball of wet clay. Sometimes they molded the clay around a stone, and sometimes they built up the model by adding small bits of clay. The model was made on a flat stone, and the potter walked around and around to build up the shape from all sides.

Sooner or later the early potter was bound to think of turning the stone around while he squatted on the ground. Maybe he merely wanted to save his Steps, but his clever idea was the ancestor of the potter's wheel. For ages it was just a flat table of stone or wood fixed to a central pivot. The potter used one hand to shape his clay and the other to turn the wheel.

The potter's wheel taught mankind to deal with circles. All the points on the edge of a circle are the same distance from the center. When the potter held his hand steady while the wheel rotated, his model was perfectly round. About 2000 years ago, the potters of Egypt added a foot pedal to turn the wheel. A potter then had both hands free to model his clay.

About 300 years ago, the potters of Europe turned their wheels by a cord looped around a pulley, and, in the i9th Century, the potter's wheel was driven by steam.

The potter's wheel played an important role in human history. It was one of man's first machines, for it was a mechanical device to help him do his work. He used it through thousands of years, and all this time the potter's wheel was teaching his hands new skills. It also slowly trained mankind to trust machines to help him do his work and to do it better.