26. They Said it Would Never Work
Louis Brennan, inventor of the gyro monorail, must have seemed like he was balancing on the edge of reality and fiction. His invention, a train balancing on a single rail thanks to the gyroscopic action of a spinning wheel, was incredibly innovative.
The gyro monorail, a prototype that remained a unique slice of early 20th-century ingenuity, promised sharper turns and stability that conventional trains of the time couldn’t match. It’s like something out of a Jules Verne novel—trains banking like aircraft on bends, unfazed by the forces that would topple lesser designs.