If you're ever in York in the UK, there's a cool model of Brennan's Gyrostatic monorail car in the National Railway Museum. I had no idea about gyrocars before that and was blown away by the technical prowess of the design from the early 1900s. His wasn't an automobile as such, but rather a rail vehicle that operated on a single rail, just like a monorail.
His actually pre-dates this, with him patenting the design in 1903, developing a working model in 'about 1907' (according to my photos of the display) and a full-sized one in 1909. That suggests, assuming the parent wiki is correct, that the idea of a gyro automobile was described in fantasy after a gyro rail vehicle was fully developed. I find it quite interesting that it took that long for the idea to leap from one mode of transport to the other, and it probably speaks to how unfamiliar the automobile was as a concept even in the first decade of the 1900s.
His wiki [1] provides a bit more info, and links to the article on the gyro monorail car [2] with a wealth of detailed information about the design (much of which maps to the gyrocar).
It was the first thing I thought of when I saw the title, visited the museum earlier this year, the model is a bit hidden in the back of the museum. It is a great museum and they have so many interesting things there.
His actually pre-dates this, with him patenting the design in 1903, developing a working model in 'about 1907' (according to my photos of the display) and a full-sized one in 1909. That suggests, assuming the parent wiki is correct, that the idea of a gyro automobile was described in fantasy after a gyro rail vehicle was fully developed. I find it quite interesting that it took that long for the idea to leap from one mode of transport to the other, and it probably speaks to how unfamiliar the automobile was as a concept even in the first decade of the 1900s.
His wiki [1] provides a bit more info, and links to the article on the gyro monorail car [2] with a wealth of detailed information about the design (much of which maps to the gyrocar).
Fascinating design.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Brennan [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_monorail