Cool Waste Of Time - Where Are All The Monowheels?

by , 1:40 PM EDT, October 27th, 2005

You know, we've got cars with 4 wheels, trucks with 18 wheels, motorcycles with 2 ( and 4) wheels, but there are no popular vehicles with one wheel. Why is that?

There is a certain logic in the advantages of a one-wheeled conveyance: pushing one wheel instead of 4 has got to be easier and so it should be efficient, big wheels handle pot holes a lot better than small ones, and there's only one tire to change in the event of a flat.

Could a uni-car be the answer to our quest for fuel efficient vehicles? Might we be missing out on all sort of one-wheeled fun? Can it be that the automakers of the world are holding back one-wheeled technology?

If these are questions that might keep you up at night, worry not, for we have the answer in the main attraction of this installment of A Cool Waste of Time.

One-wheeled travel has, indeed, been on the minds of many inventors over the years, and the products of their quest for the creation of a convenient single wheeled conveyance have been gathered, virtually speaking, in one place, on a Web page simply titled 'Monowheels'.

There you will find the oddest of the odd and strangest of the strange, like The Gyro-Electric Destroyer of 1918 or the Christie Monowheel of 1924.

If, after looking over the many earlier attempt at monowheel mobility, you've decided that such ideas have been laid to rest, think again: There are monowheels being produced today, some commercially. If that isn't enough, take a look at the V8 powered monowheel. Yeah baby!

All of this just goes to prove that you can't keep a mediocre idea down.

For those of you who insist on having more than one wheel, but still prefer something different, check out the diwheels site, complete with a movie of a modern diwheel vehicle. Now there's an idea whose time has come, and gone.

Do you have a Cool Waste of Time you found on the Internet? Tell Vern Seward all about it, and he's pass it around...

Monowheels