The Brennan Self-Balancing Monorail
This is so cool: in the early 1900s, a mechanical engineer named Louis Brennan invented a self-balancing train that ran on a single track. This video demonstrates how the train worked using a clever system of gyroscopes.
This is the Brennan Monorail, a train from the early 1900s that seemed to defy the laws of physics. Not only did it keep itself perfectly balanced on a single rail, but it mysteriously leaned into corners without any driver input.
It’s kind of incredible how well Brennan’s system worked. It’s ingenious. (via messy nessy)
Comments 4
I swear, if gyroscopes weren't real I would think they were too weird for fiction.
If this worked in the sense engineers mean (unlike physicists, like me, who can gleefully ignore things like redundancy and failure modes), then all trains would be like this. All trains are not like this.
As an engineer, I appreciate this distinction. Then, we'd both back away and wait to see whether the MBA says it works.
Marge vs the Monorail
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