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Motosk8 - Next Best Thing To Tele-Motor-Coasters
Motosk8 is a very special kind of personal transportation, designed by extreme sports enthusiast Tim Gendle. While not made by Acme, this device looks like something that Wile E. Coyote might try - it's an inline skate with a 22.5 cc two-stroke gas motor attached.
(From CNET Asia)
Only one skate is powered (which brings to mind a number of painful possibilities), and it weighs 12 pounds. However, you can hit 25 miles per hour by using a hand-held throttle cable assembly and brake using the standard inline drag brake.
And, what's more, if you run out of gas, you can just continue to free skate to the gas station. Try that with your Hummer. Not that you're likely to run out of gas; Motosk8 averages 100 mpg (the manufacturer doesn't state whether that is in the city or on the highway).
More than ninety years ago, Hugo Gernsback wrote about a device called a tele-motor-coaster in his excellent novel Ralph 124c 41 +:
...Ralph bade Alice sit down on a chair in the vestibule. He pressed a nearby button twice and a servant brought two pairs of what appeared to be roller-skates.Engineers will be eager to get their hands on some of that remarkable weight-reducing metal alomagnesium; see the previous article Obtaining Unobtainium At DARPATech 2004.In reality they were Tele-motor-coasters. They were made of alomagnesium and each weighed only about one and a half pounds... Between the wheels was a small electric motor - about the size of a lemon...
(Read more from Tele-Motor-Coasters)
Take a look at a brief Motosk8 video. See more complete specs for Motosk8's at Motosk8; story from Motosk8 CNETAsia Reviews via Gizmodo.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 9/30/2004)
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I might also be thinking of K-9 from Doctor Who.
