7 ms·

The bizarre Monowheel seen through vintage photographs

73 points by davesailer 5y ago

jcun4128 5y ago
Some of the mono-bi wheel tank designs people made models of https://youtu.be/i4p25rzPDw8?t=932 https://youtu.be/i4p25rzPDw8?t=932
- jfk13 5y ago
  There's also the Secret Weapon featured in a Dad's Army episode: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5sazsy https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5sazsy
elihu 5y ago
In theory I suppose you could improve the braking ability quite a bit by having a flywheel spinning about an axis perpendicular to the axis the main wheel rotates at, to act a gyroscope and prevent the "gerbiling" problem the article mentions.
- kurthr 5y ago
  That is an interesting design, but the first ideas I had of how to implement lead to the device turning (either Yaw or Roll) when the stopping (Pitch) torque is applied. This seems less than optimal! What I like about that however is that turning (and/or coordinated turning) could be implemented without requiring leaning over... that means you could have extremely tight turning radius! I always thought of these Monowheels as simply a rail car inside a large wheel... which has pretty limited advantages, while the momentum of the outer wheel has definite disadvantages. Now perhaps a flywheel in the opposite direction of the wheel (but planar with it) could be used to apply stopping force (without the yaw/roll) up to the limit of friction? The view issues could now also be resolved by simply putting cameras (or even old-timey periscopes) in so you could see straight ahead.
  - arbitrage 5y ago
    You could have two flywheels to balance the forces.
    - kurthr 5y ago
      I'm not sure conservation of angular momentum works the way you're describing (as in their moments would fully cancel). That means that they also wouldn't act to improve stopping force/torque. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/79699/dynamics-of-counter-rotating-flywheels https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/79699/dynamics-o...
- andrewflnr 5y ago
  I was thinking maybe just skids or small wheels in front. There's a dual problem of sliding up the front of the wheel when accelerating hard that would also be nice to solve a similar way, though not as critical.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
I love the impracticality of leaning over to see where you’re going
- decafninja 5y ago
  Seems like a problem that could be solved with cameras today.
- megablast 5y ago
  Like sailing.
twobitshifter 5y ago
I wonder what the advantages of having a giant wheel rather than a unicycle version were seen to be? Were pneumatic tires non-existent? Is it a balance thing? I think the quest of needing only one wheel never went away, today we have one-wheel skateboards and electric unicycles which might be looked at the same way in 100 years. (Or maybe we'll all finally adapt to rolling around on only one wheel)
- evan_ 5y ago
  I bought a One Wheel at the beginning of summer and rode it everywhere for a couple months. I decided to take a break from it when hospitals started getting slammed with Delta. I never took a nosedive but the constant xrays of broken wrists and collarbones on r/onewheel started to get to me.
  - conductr 5y ago
    My left arm is all messed up from an electric skateboard fall. Elbow had a fracture and wrist and shoulder severely sprained. I’m pretty sure some soft tissue damage occurred. It’s a year ago and I’m still trying to walk it off. I was only going about 10 mph of a max speed of 33 mph when I hit about a 4 inch wide crack in the asphalt. Was a low light situation and I didn’t see it in time to brake. Anywho, I definitely wear the wrist plates and elbow pads now. Knee pads at higher speeds. I also invested in some lighting although I pretty much only ride in places I know have smooth surfaces now. The one wheel scares me because a lot of the falls are due to it (mis?)interpreting a body movement as a braking signal and ejects the rider forward.
    - evan_ 5y ago
      Ouch, that sucks, good luck in your recovery. The issue with the One Wheel is that it balances nose to tail by accelerating or decelerating, but it has a finite amount of power available. Once you’re going close to the top speed it can’t accelerate anymore (or you’re maxing out the acceleration) it can no longer balance to the nose side and the front drops. There’s “pushback” to warn you, people try to mitigate it with extra little wheels (“fangs”), but it’s really seems like it’s just an inherent issue.
hagbard_c 5y ago
No images for me, digging deeper shows a "Rate limit exceeded, that's all we know" message from Google.
- jeromegv 5y ago
  Some photos are on Google Cache http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Frarehistoricalphotos.com%2Fmonowheel-historical-photos%2F&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&r...
- smusamashah 5y ago
  Google cache link works https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/monowheel-historical-photos/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jandrese 5y ago
The thing that surprised me the most were the ones that apparently saw the tremendous stability problems of the entire concept and decided to add an unguarded airplane propeller to the front to make sure any instability results in disaster.
voidfunc 5y ago
Monowheels are really cool and totally impractical. If I had the space to store one, I'd probably buy one for shits and giggles.
dogma1138 5y ago
Another one of those sites where have to manually object to legitimate interest manually 10 times…
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
riffic 5y ago
the south park vehicle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entity_(South_Park) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entity_(South_Park)
robbedpeter 5y ago
Those spokes on the "400 mph" monster monowheel would vaporize the pilot, like a giant inverted blender. Engineering safety has come a long way.
gnutrino 5y ago
This guy rocks the mono wheel in parades! https://instagram.com/hunter_howell_?utm_medium=copy_link https://instagram.com/hunter_howell_?utm_medium=copy_link
wiml 5y ago
For more monowheels, check out Douglas Self's Museum of Transport page (a wonderful old-days-of-the-internet style collection of obscure info). Here's the section on monowheels: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/motorwhl/motorwhl.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/motorwhl/motorw...
duxup 5y ago
Gerbiling sounds both hilarious and terrifying.
bredren 5y ago
There is (was?) an art car at burning man that uses this principle. It was the first mutant vehicle I ever laid eyes on. https://imgur.com/a/Y5Q9Qq7 https://imgur.com/a/Y5Q9Qq7

73 points by davesailer 5y ago

Some of the mono-bi wheel tank designs people made models of https://youtu.be/i4p25rzPDw8?t=932 https://youtu.be/i4p25rzPDw8?t=932

jfk13 5y ago
There's also the Secret Weapon featured in a Dad's Army episode: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5sazsy https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5sazsy

elihu 5y ago

In theory I suppose you could improve the braking ability quite a bit by having a flywheel spinning about an axis perpendicular to the axis the main wheel rotates at, to act a gyroscope and prevent the "gerbiling" problem the article mentions.

kurthr 5y ago
That is an interesting design, but the first ideas I had of how to implement lead to the device turning (either Yaw or Roll) when the stopping (Pitch) torque is applied. This seems less than optimal! What I like about that however is that turning (and/or coordinated turning) could be implemented without requiring leaning over... that means you could have extremely tight turning radius! I always thought of these Monowheels as simply a rail car inside a large wheel... which has pretty limited advantages, while the momentum of the outer wheel has definite disadvantages. Now perhaps a flywheel in the opposite direction of the wheel (but planar with it) could be used to apply stopping force (without the yaw/roll) up to the limit of friction? The view issues could now also be resolved by simply putting cameras (or even old-timey periscopes) in so you could see straight ahead.
- arbitrage 5y ago
  You could have two flywheels to balance the forces.
  - kurthr 5y ago
    I'm not sure conservation of angular momentum works the way you're describing (as in their moments would fully cancel). That means that they also wouldn't act to improve stopping force/torque. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/79699/dynamics-of-counter-rotating-flywheels https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/79699/dynamics-o...
andrewflnr 5y ago
I was thinking maybe just skids or small wheels in front. There's a dual problem of sliding up the front of the wheel when accelerating hard that would also be nice to solve a similar way, though not as critical.

micromacrofoot 5y ago

I love the impracticality of leaning over to see where you’re going

decafninja 5y ago
Seems like a problem that could be solved with cameras today.
megablast 5y ago
Like sailing.

twobitshifter 5y ago

I wonder what the advantages of having a giant wheel rather than a unicycle version were seen to be? Were pneumatic tires non-existent? Is it a balance thing? I think the quest of needing only one wheel never went away, today we have one-wheel skateboards and electric unicycles which might be looked at the same way in 100 years. (Or maybe we'll all finally adapt to rolling around on only one wheel)

evan_ 5y ago
I bought a One Wheel at the beginning of summer and rode it everywhere for a couple months. I decided to take a break from it when hospitals started getting slammed with Delta. I never took a nosedive but the constant xrays of broken wrists and collarbones on r/onewheel started to get to me.
- conductr 5y ago
  My left arm is all messed up from an electric skateboard fall. Elbow had a fracture and wrist and shoulder severely sprained. I’m pretty sure some soft tissue damage occurred. It’s a year ago and I’m still trying to walk it off. I was only going about 10 mph of a max speed of 33 mph when I hit about a 4 inch wide crack in the asphalt. Was a low light situation and I didn’t see it in time to brake. Anywho, I definitely wear the wrist plates and elbow pads now. Knee pads at higher speeds. I also invested in some lighting although I pretty much only ride in places I know have smooth surfaces now. The one wheel scares me because a lot of the falls are due to it (mis?)interpreting a body movement as a braking signal and ejects the rider forward.
  - evan_ 5y ago
    Ouch, that sucks, good luck in your recovery. The issue with the One Wheel is that it balances nose to tail by accelerating or decelerating, but it has a finite amount of power available. Once you’re going close to the top speed it can’t accelerate anymore (or you’re maxing out the acceleration) it can no longer balance to the nose side and the front drops. There’s “pushback” to warn you, people try to mitigate it with extra little wheels (“fangs”), but it’s really seems like it’s just an inherent issue.

hagbard_c 5y ago

No images for me, digging deeper shows a "Rate limit exceeded, that's all we know" message from Google.

jeromegv 5y ago
Some photos are on Google Cache http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Frarehistoricalphotos.com%2Fmonowheel-historical-photos%2F&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&r...
smusamashah 5y ago
Google cache link works https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/monowheel-historical-photos/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jandrese 5y ago

The thing that surprised me the most were the ones that apparently saw the tremendous stability problems of the entire concept and decided to add an unguarded airplane propeller to the front to make sure any instability results in disaster.

voidfunc 5y ago

Monowheels are really cool and totally impractical. If I had the space to store one, I'd probably buy one for shits and giggles.

dogma1138 5y ago

Another one of those sites where have to manually object to legitimate interest manually 10 times…

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

riffic 5y ago

the south park vehicle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entity_(South_Park) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entity_(South_Park)

robbedpeter 5y ago

Those spokes on the "400 mph" monster monowheel would vaporize the pilot, like a giant inverted blender. Engineering safety has come a long way.

gnutrino 5y ago

This guy rocks the mono wheel in parades! https://instagram.com/hunter_howell_?utm_medium=copy_link https://instagram.com/hunter_howell_?utm_medium=copy_link

wiml 5y ago

For more monowheels, check out Douglas Self's Museum of Transport page (a wonderful old-days-of-the-internet style collection of obscure info). Here's the section on monowheels: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/motorwhl/motorwhl.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/motorwhl/motorw...

duxup 5y ago

Gerbiling sounds both hilarious and terrifying.

bredren 5y ago

There is (was?) an art car at burning man that uses this principle. It was the first mutant vehicle I ever laid eyes on. https://imgur.com/a/Y5Q9Qq7 https://imgur.com/a/Y5Q9Qq7