The foot-propelled vehicle patent
This page shows U.S. patent #5454579, which is for a "foot-propelled vehicle". It looks like a
unicycle with training wheels, but the exact purpose of the device is not clearly stated in the
document, other than the inventor's view that no one wants to ride unicycles anymore, but they
will want to ride this.
This device appears to have two possible purposes:
- A unicycle with training wheels. My guess is that this would not be effective, because the
three or four extra wheels do not lift off the ground.
- A unicycle that you can coast on. While some expert unicyclists can coast, it is not a useful riding skill; it is used in performance. By releasing the pressure on the pedals of this device, the main wheel lifts up and you are rolling on the coasters.
I don't really understand the utility of this device. I actually think that the creators patented it on a lark, so they can say that they got a patent. At least now I will have an answer when people ask if they have unicycles with training wheels.
The patent shown here is in the form of 6 scanned images from the IBM Patent Server.
Beirne Konarski
Copyright © 1998 Beirne Konarski All rights reserved.
Last modified: Sun Mar 8 23:00:20 1998
