in mechanics, a simple machine, consisting of a round piece of wood, metal, or other matter, which revolves on its axis. See MECHANICS.

WHEEL-CARRIAGES. See MECHANICS, Sect. iv.

WHEEL-ANIMALS. See ANIMALCULE, no. 16—23.

Persian. See HYDROSTATICS.

Potter's. See POTTERY.

Wheel is also the name of a kind of punishment to which great criminals are put in divers countries. In some, affassins, parricides, and robbers on the highway, are said to be condemned to the wheel, when they are to have their bones first broken with an iron bar on a leatfold, and then to be exposed, and left to expire on the circumference of a wheel. In Germany they break their bones on the wheel itself.—Of this cruel punishment, it is not certain who was the inventor: it was first used in Germany, and was, indeed, but rarely practised anywhere else, till the time of Francis I. of France; who, by an edict of the year 1534, appointed it to be inflicted on robbers on the highway.