Inventive genius
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THE three-wheeled van is still with us just (especially in France), but might we yet see a two-wheeler? According to author Norman Tomlinson Louis Brennan, Inventor Extraordinaire, published by John Hallewell, at £7.95 Brennan's two-wheeled "Gyrocar" was more comfortable and safer than conventional vehicles yet turned down by Austin/Morris/Rover because they could sell all the four-wheeled ones they could make.
As a modern counterpart, says Mr Tomlinson, who is also divisional librarian of Gillingham, Ford displayed its "Gyron" in 1961 and has been unusually reticent about its "Gyro-Egg" or "Billiard-Ball" car of the future.
This is a most interesting book, that will appeal to others besides the technically minded, about the Irish-born (1852) mechanical genius, who also invented the "Dirigible Torpedo", used for 20 years in harbour defence.
Mr Tomlinson recounts that the inventor's gyroscopic monorail was the sensation of the Japan-British Exhibition at the White City in 1910 and attracted the personal attention of Prime Minister Asquith, Winston Churchill and LloydGeorge. In a two-page feature in Commercial Motor in NovembE 1909 we headlined it "The Brennan Mono-Track Vehicle."
The vehicle was about 40ft long, 10ft wide and 13ft high, weighing 22 tons empty. It took a load of 10 to 15 tons on its ow platform and could still then ascend a 1 in 13 gradient. "The principle on which it is constructed has now been abundantly proved," we reported. "We see no reason why the principle should not be applied to motor-propelled ma( vehicles, for both passenger am goods traffic."
However, only two monorail cars were ever made, and the enterprise was abandoned in 1912. Louis Brennan next turne( his attention to the helicopter, which he had first described in E letter in 1884. Government support was discontinued in 1926 in favour of the autogyro, says Mr Tomlinson, more than ten years before Focke-Achgelk and Sikorsky were credited with inventing the helicopter.
John Hallewell Publications Ltd 38 High Street, Chatham, Kent.