Spoke

A spoke is one of some number of rods radiating from the center of a wheel (the hub where the axle connects), connecting the hub with the round traction surface.

The term originally referred to portions of a log that had been split lengthwise into four or six sections. The radial members of a wagon wheel were made by carving a spoke (from a log) into their finished shape. A spokeshave is a tool originally developed for this purpose. Eventually, the term spoke was more commonly applied to the finished product of the wheelwright's work, than to the materials he used.

History

The spoked wheel was invented to allow the construction of lighter and swifter vehicles. The earliest known examples are in the context of the Andronovo culture, dating to ca. 2000 BC. Soon after this, horse cultures of the Caucasus region used horse-drawn spoked-wheel war chariots for the greater part of three centuries. They moved deep into the Greek peninsula where they joined with the existing Mediterranean peoples to give rise, eventually, to classical Greece after the breaking of Minoan dominance and consolidations led by pre-classical Sparta and Athens. Celtic chariots introduced an iron rim around the wheel in the 1st millennium BC. The spoked wheel was in continued use without major modification until the 1870s, when wire wheels and rubber tires were invented.

Spokes (album)

Spokes is an album released by Plaid in 2003. Advanced press hinted that it would be a return to the sounds of The Black Dog.

Track listing

Promotions

Warp Records hosted a Flash-based mini-site for Spokes, with abstract graphics like those on the album art. The page featured a five by seven array of spoked wheel-like icons, and previews for six of the album tracks. When the spoke icons were clicked, seemingly random characters in the Spokes font would appear, one for each of the five columns. The first icon clicked would start a background song that was not included in the album, and repeated clicking of icons would display different letters. If the letters AWOTM were displayed by clicking on the spokes, a download link would appear, linking to a ZIP-compressed MP3 file. The MP3 was "Awotm", the same track that was played when the spoke icons were clicked. This track has not been included on any Plaid album to date.

External links

Time Will Reveal

Time Will Reveal is the 4th studio album by the West Coast hip hop group Above the Law, released in 1996 (see 1996 in music). This was the first Above the Law album not released on Ruthless Records; instead it was released on Tommy Boy.

Track listing

Personnel