People have been designing and building so-called “mono wheel” vehicles for a long time, like over 80 years now as is proven by the video below. We’re sure that the existed on paper and in theory before 1930 but we can say that J.A. Purves Dynasphere was the first one to get a patent and likely the first one most everyone in the world had ever seen with a gas engine and a top speed of 30+ miles per hour. Purves was of the mind that the mono-wheel was to be the ultimate vehicle of the future as it was efficient and scaleable (he actually built one that could seat eight people but we can find no photos and video of it). Purves was 100% wrong in his assumptions but we love his vehicle. There’s video of people that have built them with super narrow outer structured but the Purves design, which looks like a monster truck tire with a driver is really the best looking of them all.

Since these were built in the 1930s, there was no carbon fiber, exotic alloy metals, or high tech production methods. Nope, these things were made of cast iron. You will see two different Dynaspheres in the video. The one that has the vertical style ribs was generation two and the other design weighed well north of 1,000lbs due to the iron construction. The gas powered examples you’ll see here used a small two cylinder engine that was hooked to a three speed transmission which also had reverse! We’d love to back into a parking space in this thing while unsuspecting passers-by looked on. We’d be YouTube million hitters in no time.

You’ll see a snipped in this video that shows a woman driving the Dynasphere and explaining the steering. Doing some quick math shows about 600 turns lock to lock. Grated she was sitting still and we don’t know how much input it would take to steer it while driving but let’s just say that the Dynasphere wouldn’t really be fit for competition driving situations. There were a couple other issues, mainly the fact that braking was either non-existent on purpose of non-existent because they hadn’t figured that out yet and the fact that occupants had a tendency to roll around inside the thing like gerbils when braking or accelerating.

Despite those failures we love videos like this that expose us to something we never knew about before. We can mock guys like Purves if we want to but these are guys that should be celebrated. Independent thinkers and innovators not held by the bonds of conventional thought. A lot of amazing things come from people of that ilk….as well as a lot of Dynaspheres but you can’t make an omelette without busting a few eggs.

PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE THE DYNASPHERE IN ACTION!

Dynasphere from Beth Andrews on Vimeo.