Radical wheels from Men in Black 3, not the first

Published May 25, 2012
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2 min read

The latest Hollywood flick to hit the big screens, Men in Black 3, features the extremely interesting and fancy mode of transportation, a monocycle in its futuristic form. We take a quick look at the monocycle

The one-wheeled cycle might be shown as the obvious future of motorcycles in the third installment of the Men in Black movie series, but fact remains that one of the earliest monocycle was invented in 1932 by one, J. A. Purves called Dynasphere and it was quite an engineering marvel for its time and largely revered as a mode of transportation of the future. But the unattainable task of keeping the Dynasphere stable and the effort required for steering it coupled with the fact that it could carry only one person, the rider, at a time meant its impracticality for everyday use resulted into an early demise of the Dynasphere.

But the monowheel concept has been catching the fancy of many inventors since then and a handful of new monocycle concepts have been conceived over the last couple of decades. The most eye-catching and news-grabbing design in the last decade came from Kerry McLean of USA, who named his monocycle invention Rocket Roadster. The V8 powered Rocket Roadster suffered a terrible crash during its first test when it went out of control and severely injured McLean. However, passionate and committed, Kerry still makes V8 powered monocycles and his latest creation is called the McLean V8 Drag Wheel, which he completed last year.

Another variation of the monocycle came in 2007 called the Wheelsurf, powered by a small capacity Honda engine. It worked on the same principal as other monocycles and is currently the only production monocycle in the world. Most of these monocycle concepts have only ended up being fun vehicles as they have zero practicality in comparison to existing motorcycles and cars. Not to mention the job of maneuvering a monocycle safely even at its feeble top speed of about 40km/h requires extremely precise sense of balance and throttle control, which means it is not everybody’s cup of tea.

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Rightfully then, only the highly skilled hands of Agent K (Josh Brolin) and Agent J (Will Smith) from Men in Black can master the art of riding the radical and futuristic monocycles as they go chasing the tricked out chopper of the alien villain Boris (Jemaine Clement) through the crowded streets of New York City.