Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, UK
(Fox Photos / Getty)
With the first monowheel patent dating to 1869, the idea of a single-wheeled vehicle suggested several advantages over two-wheeled vehicles: less weight, less size and less resistance, all of which should theoretically equate to more efficiency.
A small stream of inventors pursued the concept, despite the not-insignificant problems that a single-wheel vehicle presented: reduced stability, reduced steerage and, self-evidently, a blocked view.
The monowheel shown here – the Dynasphere – was patented by sixty-year-old John Archibald Purves in 1930. Purves, from the town of Taunton in Somerset, UK, drew inspiration from an illustration by Leonardo da Vinci, and claimed he had created ‘the highspeed vehicle of the future’. Reaching top speeds of thirty miles per hour, the ten-foot high, 1,000-pound wheel required Purves to lean out to either side in order to steer.
‘This novel vehicle is capable of rolling along roads, or over fields and wild country, as easily as a ball runs along a smooth surface. It possesses so many advantages that we may eventually see gigantic wheels running along our highways in as many numbers as motor cars do today.’
Meccano magazine, February 1935
