A Brief History of the Monocycle, Humanity’s Most Useless Vehicle
This month, the RYNO, a one-wheeled electric motorcycle, is slated to start rolling off the assembly line. Why, one might ask, might human society need a one-wheeled electric motorcycle? Well, we don’t, but that hasn’t stopped us from churning out all kinds of vehicular experiments with dubious utility—today’s prime example being the Segway. But the all-time poster child for claptrap transportation might well be the monocycle, or the monowheel, in all of its myriad forms over the last century.
Humankind has, for some reason, been intent on perfecting a one-wheeled form of transportation since the 1800s. Below is the Rousseau Monowheel, invented by Rousseau of Marseilles in 1869.
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- by Brian Merchant
