The Mono-track 3-tonner.
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A Representative of Our Sister Journal "The Motor" Makes a Trial Run on the New Gyroscopic Chassis.
Mr. Pierre Schilowsky, a well-known Russian inventor, sprang a splendid surprise on Londoners when one afternoon last week, without preliminary announcemerra he took a seat beside the motorman of his 20 lap. 3k-ton two-wheeled gyrocar and proceeded on low speed at four miles an hour from the garage into Portman Square, where he made several circuits, while cinema machines purred and cameras clicked, demonstrating that this vehicle of great overall length and weight is not only self-stable so long as the motor is working to deliver power to a dynamo, whence it is passed to the gyroscope, but also that at the rate of speed specified it can be turned in the comparatively-small compass of a London square, and can be handled in the thionged traffic of the world's Metropolis.
Presently the inventor called a halt, and with the 20 lap. Wolseley engine tanning light, the gyroscope was kept working, so that there was no necessity to apply a sort of brake lever that let down roller-tipped skids for keeping the two-a-heeled gyrocar in an upright position when in the garage and with the mechanism at rest. The two wheels traverse a single track, the front one being set centrally in front of the engine bonnet for all the world as if you had placed a giant safety bicycle fork in front of a motorcar. The weight of the gyroscope does not exceed 10 net cent. of the total weight of the vehicle, a maximum of not more than 1 h.p. is required to work it, arid the rate of revolution necessary for efficiency is proportionately slow, namely, from 1200 to 1500 turns a minute. The special point about the inventor's system of employing the gyroscopic principle is that automatic means are provided of moving the gyroscope on its axis as it turns on ball bearings ahe lot hastening the number of turns momentarily by tha action of dual pendulums, one on each side of the front seats, whieh on the slightest deviation of the balance of the gyrocar from a dead-even keel coma into engagement with a ratchet device, which is the means of actuating the mechanism for accelerating the gyroscope and moving its axis, a slight click indicating that the spring for automatically disengaging the correct ratchet and pendulum at the right moment has done its work.
How efficient it is we learnt from seeing the gyrocar stand upright in the street without any support, with the two wheels perfectly stationary, while people leant against it and others stood on it, moving about at their convenience and jumping off suddenly as the fancy took them without upsetting the balance in any way that could be detected by the human eye, the feature of it being thereforeathat the car is laterally more stable than a four-wheeled vehicle, because you know that if a heavy man steps on to the running board of the most powerful car that is well sprung, he On sets up a lateral oscillation. On starting up the car again, Dr. Sehilowsky directed it to be driven up Baker Street into Regent's Park, where he invited four selected passengets, including Mr. Louis Brennan, C.B., inventor of the gyrotrain, Professor C. Vernon Boys, and the representative of " The Motor " to make a tour of the outer circle with him.
" Having absolutely standard gears," he said, " you will understand that this is only what I will call a popular demonstration ; but I am having gears of suitably calculated ratios made, and I expect them to be ready on my return from the Continent in 10 days or a fortnight's time, when I will give you a demonstration of faster travel. If my ear were designed for the single purpose of travelling along the road it would be a very much lighter machine, but I am handicapping my purpose by making this first full-scale gyrocar suitable for the road, with the solid rubber tires now on, and suitable for a singlerail without the tires. We will now put the higher gear in service, and you will see that the motor cannot take it, for the ear -is losing speed, and if we persist the engine will stop. So we will drop back into the low speed, and you and the public shall therefore realize from this particular demonstration that when we are travelling at only four miles an
hour we are no less steady than when standing still, therefore we depend absolutely on the gyroscope for our balance, and you see it is not failing us." We progressed so smoothly as not to feel any vibration nor to hear any noise of the working of the mechanism. No six-cylinder car could be more silent. The luxury of the suspension in a longitudinal sense through the use of a sort of cantilever springing fore and aft made our progress perfectly smooth, while our single track caused us to be more absolutely immune from lateral oscillation than is the rider of a pedal-bicycle, because there was no necessity—indeed it was not possible—to incline the front wheel now this way, now that, to assist in any way in the preservation of • balance sideways. When we came to make the only right-angle turn necessary in the park, we did it in comparatively small compass, the overall length of the vehicle considered ; and the astonishing thing was to discover us making that turn with the gyrocar still on a dead-even keel as distinct from being heeled over as on a bicycle or an aeroplane. On entering the park, too, the vehicle had been advanced and reversed two or three times, standing stationary like a motorcar between each operation and always in perfect balance. It was an odd experience to make a journey on what is admittedly an experimental machine of its kind and yet to enjoy such absolute luxury of progression and an entire absence of any feature of coarseness of performance or any hint of failure even for a moment in the working of the mechanism. The littlt ball that ticks when every hundred revolutions of the gyroscope are made reported all well from start to finish of our journey.
When the new gears are fitted, it will be particularly interesting to study the conduct of the gyrocar at the normal speeds of mechanical road vehicles, and especially to observe whether or not it is possible to negotiate corners and abrupt turns of the way with comparable ease and safety, allowance being made for the fact that this example scales very much more than the inventor deems necessary in the case of a pleasure car designed for road service and nothing else. The machine certainly marks a material stage of advance in gyrocar progress.