Some time ago I was introduced to a late 19th century invention that
captured my attention: A monorail train that stood upright by way of a pair of
counter-rotating gyros:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_monorail
The physics are terribly simple, the counter-rotating gyros overcoming the
precession when in a turn. The Russians came up with a 4-passenger touring
car, and there were a number of other experiments with what became generally
known as a "gyrocar":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrocar
In the late 1950s Ford developed a prototype 2-passenger car, which had
problems with the amount of time it took the gyros to come up to speed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Gyron
Now I learned on an evening news programme that an American company has
developed a new gyrocar:
http://litmotors.com/
They seem to be promoting it as a motorcycle, but that matters little.
What's interesting is that they are reviving a 100+ year old technology and
reducing it to practice.
Chris
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro
- Hunter S. Thompson
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