History
Although roller bearings had been developed since ancient times, the first recorded patent on ball bearings was awarded to Jules Suriray, a Parisian bicycle mechanic, on 3 August 1869. The bearings were then fitted to the winning bicycle ridden by James Moore in the world's first bicycle road race, Paris-Rouen, in November 1869.
Ball bearings were first produced in Europe so they were standardized to metric dimensions. American manufacturers came along later so they produced ball bearings in metric dimensions prior to the early-1990s.
Read more about this topic: Ball Bearing
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“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
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—Attributed to Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)