alt Hacker NewsYou're right—the wheels on the Boeing 737 are, although made of forged aluminum or magnesium to withstand extreme force and heat, pretty much the same shape and operate in the same way as the Ljubljana Marshes Wheel of 3150 BCE.
Then again, flight itself has obviated—or, rather, introduced—many transit workloads that could be performed by wheeled vehicles, and operates on different principles entirely.
I found it fascinating that jetliner tires are designed to blow during extreme braking. An aborted takeoff (say microburst warning goes off), or an emergency landing will heat the brakes and tires to maximum. But there are plugs that will depressurize the tires without them coming apart. That way they don't catastrophically blow and spew tire pieces everywhere to get sucked into jet engines and damaging them.
pretty cool, sort of graceful (or at least planned) degradation of tires without cascading problems.