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"Retire? Yeah, I want to die with my head in the typewriter. That's my idea of retirement."
- Alfred Bester
 |
| Gyrocar | ||
| A two-wheeled, self-balancing automobile. |
It would be a unique and exotic sight, wouldn't it?
| Most of the cars were between sixty and seventy horse-power; the Amphibian alone being as low as forty-five; while the Capri was eighty, the Gowfer's Goer a hundred, and the huge Liebig a hundred and twenty horse-power.
And it was among these leviathans that the little gyrocar was daring to thrust its puny self, with its two young drivers - and their dog... Indeed, the gyrocar was a sight to make a man look twice. Its two wheels being, naturally, under the centre of the car, were largely hidden by the body; and the absence of the usual four wheels at the corners made it appear to be gliding over the ground without visible means of support. |
| Technovelgy from Two Boys in a Gyrocar the story of a New York to Paris motor race,
by Kenneth Brown. Published by Houghton Mifflin in 1911 Additional resources -
|
Eric Frank Russell lets his imagination go in Sinister Barriers (1939):
They hit ground level, and Wohl
straightened out, saying, “Those whirligigs sure give me a kick!”
Graham swallowed a suitable remark,
his attention caught by the long, streamlined, aluminium-bronze shape of another gyrocar. ■ It flashed along William
Street toward them, passed with an audible swoosh of air, sped up the ramp
to the corkscrew from which they had
just descended. As it passed, Graham’s
sharp eyes caught sight of a pale, haggard face staring fixedly through the
machine’s flexible glass windshield...
Wohl pressed the accelerator stud, the two-wheeled speedster plunged forward, its incased gyroscope emitting a faint hum...
He held his breath while
they cut round another decrepit four-wheeler whose driver gesticulated
wildly.
“Every jellopy ought to be banned
from the skyways,” Wohl snarled.
Compare to the Gyro-Hat from An Experiment in Gyro-Hats (1926) by Ellis Parker Butler, the directed cars in tunnels from The Lord of Tranerica (1939) by Stanton A. Coblentz, the tumblebug from The Roads Must Roll (1940) by Robert Heinlein, the Two-Wheeled Ground Car from First Lensman (1950) by E.E. 'Doc' Smith, the Gyro Two-Wheeled Truck from The Sign of the Tiger (1958) by Alan Nourse (w/Meyer), the Gyrocar (Gyro) from The Ring (1969) by Piers Anthony (w/R. Margroff) and the smart bike from Distraction (1998) by Bruce Sterling.
With a swift turn that produced a
yelp of rubber from the rear wheel, the
gyrocar spun off the skyway, and on
to a corkscrew. It whirled around the
spirals with giddying effect.
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from Two Boys in a Gyrocar the story of a New York to Paris motor race
More Ideas
and Technology by Kenneth Brown
Tech news articles related to Two Boys in a Gyrocar the story of a New York to Paris motor race
Tech news articles related to works by Kenneth Brown
Gyrocar-related
news articles:
- Gyro-X Self-Balancing Two-Wheeler Car
- Gyroscopic Median-Straddling Mass Transit Vehicles
| CyberCab - Tesla Renames The Robotaxi |
| Elon Musk Says Robotaxis Will Be Ready This August, 2024 |
| Cheap Drunk Driver Detection From UofM |
| More Like A Tumblebug Than A Motorcycle |
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'Provision had been made to meet the terrific cold which we knew would be encountered the moment we had passed beyond the atmosphere.'
'You are who we say you are, Dr. Dakin,' Turner said.'
'It's area, and its consequent light-gathering capacity, was many times greater than any rigid mirror...'
'Tell me your torments,' the Padre said, in an elderly voice marked with compassion.
'...a slender-legged tripod surmounted by a spherical body no larger than a football.'
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
