Bearings
History of bearings
Everything that runs in the mechanical world is a bearing in some way. From small plain bearing bushes to very large roller bearings.
As far as we know, the first person to have drawn a form of bearing is none other than Leonardo da Vinci. Around the year 1490, this Renaissance genius designed the very first bearing.
However, in the Industrial Revolution, the use and demand of bearings got really boosted because of all the new developed machinery. Logically, with the rise of the motorcycle and car industries, more and more different bearings were developed.
Originally, each bearing manufacturer designed its own bearing types, with its own dimensions. Selecting a bearing type then automatically meant choosing a specific manufacturer. However, this was perceived as a major disadvantage by customers. This soon led to normalization. This initially consisted of standardization in dimensions, but was later expanded in the field of tolerances and type designations.
Nowadays, bearings are standardized according to the well-known ISO standards, the German DIN standard, the American AFBMA standard or the Japanese JIS standard.