Ep. 21, Page 31

smbhax on Jan. 12, 2014

I'm here to talk to you about monowheels! These are one-wheeled vehicles, dating from the late 1800s to today, in which the passengers sit inside the wheel–like this for instance:

image from the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands (source)
^ That is a M. Gerde mildly enjoying himself at the helm of 1931's “Motor Wheel” in Arles, France (source). You can see loads of other monowheels from the past 150 years at this site. And check out the excellent newsreel footage of the British “Dynasphere” in action in 1932…and you'll see why monowheels have never made it as a form of popular transportation–little problems like poor handling, blocked visibility, low storage space, and my favorite: gerbiling, a colorful term describing what happens if friction or some other force prevents the pilot's compartment from rotating freely inside the wheel, where gravity is supposed to keep it balanced and the passengers upright; when you're gerbiling, you're going around inside the wheel, instead of it going around you–like a gerbil who's run too slow or two fast on its exercise wheel, you see. Probably not fun for very long!
But stubborn physical laws haven't stopped mad tinkerers right up to the present day from coming up with new one-wheeled designs, for some reason. Monowheel!