Bearing is an important component in contemporary mechanical equipment. Its main function is to support mechanical rotating bodies, reduce the friction coefficient during their motion, and ensure their accuracy in rotation.

The early form of linear motion bearings was to place a row of wooden poles under a row of pry plates. Modern linear motion bearings use the same working principle, but sometimes balls are used instead of rollers. The simplest rotary bearing is a sleeve bearing, which is just a lining sandwiched between the wheel and the axle. This design was later replaced by rolling bearings, which used many cylindrical rollers to replace the original bushings, with each rolling element acting like a separate wheel.

Early examples of ball bearings were discovered on an ancient Roman ship built in 40 BC in Lake Nano, Italy: a wooden ball bearing was used to support a rotating tabletop. It is said that Leonardo da Vinci described a type of ball bearing around 1500. One important factor in the immaturity of ball bearings is the collision between balls, which causes additional friction. But this phenomenon can be prevented by putting the ball into small cages one by one. In the 17th century, Galileo made the earliest description of "cage ball" ball bearings. At the end of the 17th century, in England, C Valo designed and manufactured ball bearings, and installed them on mail trucks for trial use, as well as the British P Worth obtained a patent for ball bearings. The earliest practical rolling bearing with a cage was invented by watchmaker John Harrison in 1760 for the production of H3 chronometers. H. in late 18th century Germany R. Hertz published a paper on contact stress in ball bearings. On the basis of Hertz's achievements, Germany's R Streebeck, Sweden's A Pamgren et al. conducted extensive experiments and contributed to the development of design theory and fatigue life calculation for rolling bearings. Subsequently, Russia's N P. Petrov applies Newton's law of viscosity to calculate bearing friction. The first patent for a ball groove was obtained by Philip Vaughn of Camason in 1794.

In 1883, Friedrich Fischer proposed the idea of using suitable production machines to grind steel balls of the same size and accurate roundness, laying the foundation for the bearing industry. The UK's O Renault conducted mathematical analysis on Thor's discovery and derived the Reynolds equation, laying the foundation for the theory of fluid dynamic lubrication.