VII 



THE GYROCAR 



ON the 8th of May, 1907, Mr. Louis Bren- 

 nan exhibited, at a soiree of the Royal 

 Society in London, a remarkable piece of 

 mechanism, which stirred the imagination of every be- 

 holder, and — next morning — ^as reported by the news- 

 papers, aroused the amazed interest of the world. This 

 invention consists of a car run on a single rail, standing 

 erect like a bicycle when in motion; but, unlike the 

 bicycle, being equally stable when at rest. 



It is a car that could cross the gorge of Niagara on a 

 tight-rope, like Blondin himself, but with far greater 

 security; a car that shows many strange properties, seem- 

 ing to defy not gravitation alone but the simplest laws of 

 motion. For example, if a weight is placed on one edge 

 of the car that side rises higher instead of being lowered. 



If you push against the side with your hand, the 

 mysterious creature — you feel that it must be endowed 

 with life — is actually felt to push back as if resenting the 

 aflFront. 



Similarly, if the wind blows against the car, it veers 

 over toward the wind. If the track on which it runs — 

 consisting of an ordinary gas-pipe or of a cable of wire — 

 is curved, even very sharply, the car follows the curve 

 without difficulty, and, in defiance of ordinary laws of 



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