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Rolamite is a technology for very low friction bearings developed by Sandia National Laboratories in the 1960s.
Description
Invented by Sandia engineer Donald F. Wilkes and patented by him on June 24, 1969 these devices use a stressed metal band and counter-rotating rollers within an enclosure to create a linear bearing device that loses very little energy to friction. One source claims it is the only basic mechanical invention of the 20th century. Tests by Sandia indicated that Rolamite mechanisms demonstrated friction coefficients as low as 0.0005, an order of magnitude better than ball bearings at the time.
References
Rolamite Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA