Inventor of the two-seated unicycle (and rocket-powered frisbee) dies

General
1

I came across an interesting unicycle reference in a news story the other day.
It was an obituary on Claude Shannon, very famous U.S. mathematician at MIT who
basically founded information theory and coined the term “bit” in 1949. He also
had other extracurricular interests. I quote from the obit in the London Daily
Telegraph: “He produced a stream of inventions of dazzling whimsy: two-seater
unicycles, juggling robots, chess-playing machines, rocket-powered Frisbees . .
. he also produced a paper on the underlying maths of juggling, an abiding love
of his (he could occasionally be seen juggling while riding a unicycle down the
halls of Bell Labs).”

I guess it figures that the same mind that could conceive of a two-seated
unicycle could also dream up the equally useful rocket-powered frisbee.

2

Re: Inventor of the two-seated unicycle (and rocket-powered frisbee)

One of the 2 most recent issues of Kaskade has several photos of innovative
unicycles, one of which is a two seater. I do not believe that Shannon is
credited therein, however.

Raphael Lasar Matawan, NJ

Michael Fuhrmann wrote:
>
> I came across an interesting unicycle reference in a news story the other day.
> It was an obituary on Claude Shannon, very famous U.S. mathematician at MIT
> who basically founded information theory and coined the term “bit” in 1949. He
> also had other extracurricular interests. I quote from the obit in the London
> Daily Telegraph: "He produced a stream of inventions of dazzling whimsy:
> two-seater unicycles

3

Re: Inventor of the two-seated unicycle (and rocket-powered frisbee) dies

Raphael Lasar wrote:
> One of the 2 most recent issues of Kaskade has several photos of innovative
> unicycles, one of which is a two seater. I do not believe that Shannon is
> credited therein, however.

Nor was he credited in the Kaskade article a few years ago about the two riders
who had just set a new world distance record on a tandem unicycle (about 85
miles IIRC, but probably 85 km since it was Kaskade). I don’t think the lack of
credit actually means anything though - after all, how many pictures of bicycles
are accompanied by a mention of Kirkpatrick MacMillan?

–
Danny Colyer (remove your.mind to reply)
http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/danny/danny.html “The secret of life is
honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made” -
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