The Ginormous Wheel

Not once, not twice, but eight different times has Popular Science or Popular Mechanics magazine declared that the future of travel is the monowheel. Wesley Treat collected the covers of these issues for a retrospective spanning from 1914 to 2007. The "One-Man War Tank" shown is from 1933. Most impressive is that you could buy a magazine for fifteen cents! Link -Thanks, beth!

Comments (11)

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Newest 5 Comments

Interesting to see just how many times the same theme has come up throughout the ages of Pop-Sci. There is an even more impressive real world uni-wheeler that I'll have to find and suggest.
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"Most impressive is that you could buy a magazine for fifteen cents!"

15cents was three loafs of bread back then. That would be somewhere around $5-$6 now.

...helps to keep things in perspective.
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There I go again fact-checking after I click "Submit." The two rear wheels, it seems, actually aided in steering, so it would be fair to say it's a tricycle. It still fits into the whole silly giant-wheel concept, anyhow.
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Two titles I would add are "Say You Love Satan" about whacked out American teens on a killing spree, and "Lords of Chaos" about the whacked out Scandanavian death metal scene.
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One of my most disturbing books (but still a fun read!) is the drive-in by Joe Lansdale. Its a sci fi book, but features the most bizarre acts of Canabalism often involving children. It was one of the few books that left me very uneasy.
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In a rare instance, I SAW American Psycho before I read it and thought the movie was a riot (especially the whole "business card" thing...I work for a commercial printer).

A third of the way through the book, I wanted to pluck out my own eyes. Not so much for the gore, as the whole obsessive portrait. Beyond horrifying.
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I had a sneak preview of Kaaron Warren's Slights, upcoming in July, and it's one of the most disturbing books I've read. I'd put it somewhere between American Psycho's and We Need to Talk Kevin. It's about a girl who accidentally kills her mother in a car accident and has a horrific near death experience where she confronts the ghosts of everyone she's ever slighted. The sense of sly menace keeps building, rending happy suburbia apart with shocking revelations, from an awful little old lady next door to the things she unearths in her obsessive excavation of her backyard that reveal disturbing clues to her past. It's brilliant, queasy-making storytelling, the kind that sticks with you, so the details might hit you again like a nasty flashback. www.angryrobotbooks.com
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Awesome, a few more books to add to my 'must buy or borrow these'. I love Burroughs, Selby and Ellis but would definately have put at least one Ryu Murakami on that list - all his books have a distinctly disturbing edge to them and are all great reads.
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I saw the 1992 movie of this with Peter Weller (Robocop) and it was the most bizarre thing I ever saw. It was somewhat entertaining, but like the book you really never had your bearings on what was happening.

Didn't this movie have a talking anus? Man, I thought I had repressed that. Crap I'm freakin' out again!!
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Suffer the Children by John Saul. At one point a 13 year old girl kills a cat with a rock and dresses it in doll clothes, then she has a tea party with it in a mineshaft and ends up swearing at it because the corpse won't respond and then beating it and finally cutting it's head off with a butcher knife in a mad rage. It made me really sad to see her abuse the animal so horribly.
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