THE CONQUEST OF TIME AND SPACE 



brought to his attention through observation of the con- 

 dition of the cattle that were shipped from North Aus- 

 tralia across the continent, that a railway car that would 

 enable the cattle to make the journey in comfort, and 

 thus arrive in marketable condition, would have enor- 

 mous value for this purpose alone. 



For years, Mr. Brennan tells me, the problem haunted 

 him, of how to make a monorail car balance itself. He 

 studied the action of rope-walkers, and he attempted 

 various crude methods of balancing a car, which all 

 came to nothing. He thought about the possibility of 

 using the gyroscope, and even purchased several elabo- 

 rate gyrostats in order to study gyroscopic action. As a 

 friend of Sir Henry Bessemer, he knew of that gentle- 

 man's experiments with the gyroscope in attempting to 

 make a steady room in a ship, but these also availed him 

 nothing. It was not until he purchased the toy top at 

 Cannes, as already mentioned, that he got hold of a 

 really viable idea; and then, of course, almost number- 

 less experiments were necessary before an apparatus 

 was devised that could meet all the requirements. 



At last, however, a model car, more than fulfilling all 

 his fondest hopes, was in actual operation. It remained 

 to build a car of commercial size. To aid him in thus 

 completing his experiments, Mr. Brennan received a 

 grant of $30,000 from the India Society. He believed 

 that a car one hundred feet long and sixteen feet wide 

 would be balanced by gyroscopes three and a half feet 

 in diameter, so efiFectively that it would stand erect and 

 rigid though fifty passengers were clustered on one side 

 of its spacious room. 



[214] 



