I've ridden a bicycle since my childhood - but never one like this!
A Chinese man has successfully patented his new invention - a bicycle with odd-sided wheels.
Guan Baihua, 50, a retired military officer in Qingdao, spent 18 months developing his unique bike.
The front wheel is a five-sided pentagon while the back wheel is a triangle, reports the Bandao City Daily.
Guan says the bike is mainly for fun but says riders could use it to lose weight as it takes more effort to pedal.
"There are too many identical mass-manufactured things. More and more, people like weird and rarely seen stuff. Making this bike gives people an alternative," he added.
However, he admitted that he was now looking for a manufacturer to mass produce his invention.
Guan says he got the frame from an ordinary bicycle but designed and made all of the other components himself.
"I've enjoyed inventing things from childhood, and since I retired from the military three years ago I have been creating small inventions at home in my free time," he said.
A journalist from Bandao City Daily tried the bike, and found it "not as bumpy as it looks", but said riders needed "special skills, otherwise it's hard to balance".
Hmm . . . would riding one of these things make me a polygonal pedalist?
Peter
It looks like something from the old Flintstones cartoon.
ReplyDeleteThe wheels are of the category of Trochoid forms which have a constant, fixed diameter, but a varying radius. The most common is the shape of the rotor in a Wankel engine, which Mazda used in their RX series cars.
ReplyDeleteOne of the manufacturing "oopsies" is a 4-sided, 3-dimensional form that looks like a pyramid, with rounded corners and convex faces that sometimes is produced when ball bearings are ground.
Thanks for the info, Billll.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I suspect if I rode that thing around locally, most people would regard me as a bit of a Wankel!
8-o