Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/866

 A One -Wheeled Motor Tractor

A concrete illustration of how the difficulty- was solved of making one wheel replace two

��THAT a one- wheeled trac- tor Dossesses certain real conveni- ences over a two- wheeled affair has long been recognized, but the problem of working out the practical diffi- culties encountered were many and not easily overcome. The accompanying illustra- tions show an ingenious solution of this prob- lem, and give a com- prehensible demon- stration of how the various difficulties were overcome. Some

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��For hauling guns over narrow trails or broken ground this tractor would be better than army mules

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Showing the interrelation of parts in the one-wheeled tractor, and its compactness

of the problems encountered were the difficulty of trans- mitting the power from the engine to the driving wheel without a heavy and in- tricate system of gearing, of gearing down the engine revolutions in order to give greater power at the driving wheel, of providing means for changing the gearing as the conditions of load or

��road might demand, and, finally, of getting all these mechanisms into a compact space and of making it pos- sible for the wheel to turn a complete circle of three hundred and sixty degrees in order to meet abrupt turn- ing conditions.

All of these prob- lems seem to have been solved in the one- wheel tractor shown on this page, the various mechanical contriv- ances for power trans- mission and gear-shift- ing being shown in the diagrammatic picture, and the attachment of the trac- tor to a fire-engine being pic- tured in another. The illustra- tion at the top shows how the tractor could be made to do its bit in the game of war by haul- ing guns over roads not passable by larger motor vehicles. ^

The model has a four-cylinder gasoline engine, three-speed gears, a heavy radiator, and every part of the mechanism heavily rein- forced. The tires are solid rubber.

���The old fire engine is attached to the tractor simply by changing from the pole and whipple-tree to a yoke

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