When humans invented the wheel
it was the beginning of a long list of vehicle designs.
This long and sometimes rather crazy history
was particularly amazing during the 20th century.
Here's a taste...
"Gravity itself is our motor power and pulls us along."
In 1930, John Archival Purves patented the Dynasphere,
a mono-wheel vehicle inspired by a sketch made by Leonardo Da Vinci.
Two prototypes were made -
an electrical model and another one with a gasoline motor.
This one could reach 30 miles per hour
and after several tests it was hailed for years as the high-speed vehicle of the future!
However, the dynasphere never left its prototype stage
because, like with most mono-wheels,
is was nearly impossible to steer or brake.
One might agree, these are pretty important features!
Rigid airships, commonly called Zeppelins,
enjoyed a relative success from the early 1900s
until the end of the 1930s.
The world's first airline in revenue service,
the German DELAG, had carried over 10,000 paying passengers
in more than 1,500 flights by 1914.
And during World War 1, the Germans used Zeppelins to bomb British territory
killing over 500 people.
Their defeat in World War 1
forbade German companies from building new Zeppelins until the
prohibition was lifted in 1926.
That's when this vehicle had its second golden decade,
building the LZ-129 Hindenburg which operated regular transatlantic
flights from Germany to America.
In 1937, the Hindenburg disaster
started the downfall of this vehicle.
Not that we have footage from the period,
but an early Chinese text, "The Book of the Golden Hall Master",
dated 500AD, already describes large vehicles
with masts and sails mounted on them.
These wind-driven carriages were able to carry
30 people at once.
It wasn't until 1600 that these vehicles were introduced to Europe,
mainly for recreation purposes.
However, during the 19th century and the early 20th century,
land yachts were also used for the transport of goods on dry lakes in the US.
"The United States Navy reveals the closest thing yet to a magic carpet.
"It's called the flying platform."
In 1955, they thought that perhaps
this could become the personal vehicle of the future.
The Hiller VZ1 Pawnee, also known as the "flying platform",
was a rotor aircraft designed by the US Army
that lifted a platform using contra rotating ducted fans.
The pilot had to shift his body weight to control its direction.
Six prototypes were built and they flew successfully
at a maximum speed of 26km per hour.
However, it was discarded as a combat vehicle due to its small size,
slow speed - and the fact that it could only fly a few feet above the ground.
The SP350 Denise is linked to the name a famous scientist Jacques Cousteau.
Denise was the very first underwater vehicle designed
for scientific exploration.
This diving saucer sailed the depths of the oceans from 1959.
She could work as deep as 350 meters down.
She moved like a squid, with a simple jet propulsion system that gave her a
a maximum speed of 3.7 km an hour.
With a capacity of two people. stretched on mattresses.
the scientists inside would watch their surroundings through tilted portholes
that allowed them to get just a few centimeters from theirs subjects.
Equipped with movable lights,
cameras and tape recorders, Denise became an essential piece
of Cousteau's ship, the Calipso, until 1965.
Nobody's saying or disputing whether flying saucers exist nowadays,
but we know now that during the 50s, the armies of several nations
developed designs for flying disks that looked very much like our idea of a UFO.
Does that explain anything?
As they say: the truth is out there!
"Sorry to disappoint you. It didn't drop in from Mars or Venus.
"It has been suggested that the aircraft of the future may well develop along these
"lines - or rather curves!"
In 1959, the union of the hovercraft and the motor scooter
gave us the hover scooter.
Although technically airborne, it became clear that it couldn't really raise above the
six inches or so of air cushion.
Its rather bulky shape and the unprotected ducted fan on the front
were the reasons why this vehicle never went mainstream.
We have longed for this invention as a means of transport
since we watched James Bond fly using a similar gadget.
The jet pack is a real device propelled by jets of escaping gases
that lift a single traveller into the air, allowing him to fly.
It started being developed in the 1960s when sci-fi technology
was actually available
and it has been used for astronauts' extra-vehicular activities.
However the Earth's gravity, and the difficult adaptation
of humans to flying, naturally have been the main obstacles for not using it
in the army
or as a means of personal transport.