Resilient wheels / Ackerman wheels with resilient spring steel spokes ( I learn something new constantly!)

  The above are from David's great vintage car site Old Motor http://theoldmotor.com/?p=20051

below I've posted before, and show them here in context to demonstrate some other odd spring focused rims... to read about their history http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2010/10/19/earlier-and-resilienter/

Also

Found on https://www.facebook.com/isabelle.bracquemond.7

Rudolph Ackermann, arrived from Germany in 1787, aged 23 as a trained carriage designer. In 1817 an old school friend, now coachbuilder to the king of Bavaria, sent him designs for a new steering system to stop coaches overrunning their wheels.

The new system put the wheels on stub axles and linked them with a bar so that they turned in parallel. Ackermann was requested to take out an English patent for it, but, as he explains in his preface to Observations on Ackermann’s Patent Axle 1819, unless the inventor appeared at the Patent Office in person then his agent was obliged to register the patent in his own name. Ironically it is still known as Ackermann’s Axle - poor old Georg Lankensperger is totally forgotten - and Ackermann’s Steering System is still used on the car you drive today.