Dicycles and Diwheels.

Updated: 4 July 2006

Ezekiel'sWheel.

The Otto Dicycle: 1870s
The Grand Panjandrum: 1944
The Vereycken diwheel: 1947
A projected diwheel: 1950s?
Ezekiel's Wheel: 1980s New
The Owen Diwheel: 1998 (on monowheel page)
A Swedish Diwheel: 1999

A dicycle or diwheel is not to be confused with a bicycle. It has two big wheels side-by-side with some sort of frame between them, and is inherently unstable in the front-back direction. Compared with monowheels, there have not been many.
THE OTTO DICYCLE

Left: The Otto Dicycle: 1870s.
Designed by a Mr Otto and manufactured in the 1870s by the BSA company of Britain.
Note the little wheel on a stalk at the rear to stop you falling over backwards. Presumably falling forwards was your own responsibility.

THE GRAND PANJANDRUM
An unassailable contender for the title of the most dangerous diwheel of all time is the British Grand Panjandrum. This World War 2 weapons system was designed by Barnes Wallis, the inventor of the Dambusters' bouncing bomb, and was intended for attacking beaches. The Panjandrum consisted of two 10-foot wooden wheels with 1-foot wide steel treads, joined by a central drum, and propelled by small powder rockets attached to the rims. The central drum was intended to be fitted with a massive explosive payload- no less than 4000 pounds.
The intention was to carry the Panjandrum close inshore in a landing craft, drop the front ramp, and ignite the rockets. The great wheel would then plunge through the shallows and roll up the beach at 60mph, crushing barbed wire until it encountered a suitable enemy obstacle, when it would explode. How detonation would be triggered at the right time is currently unknown.
In reality the rockets fired unevenly, the direction of travel was completely unpredictable, and it was much a danger to its own side as to the enemy. At least one demonstration saw the onlookers fleeing for their lives before the Panjandrum toppled over on its side and stopped careering about.
The prototype was built in great secrecy at Leytonstone, in East London, not a mile from where I sit and type. It was transported with similiar secrecy to Devon, travelling at night, but once there all security evaporated.
Testing was done on the beach at Westward Ho, a seaside resort in Devon. This "secret weapon" was tested several times in full view of holidaymakers, leading to some interesting speculation as to its real purpose- see below.

The Panjandrum just before a test: 1943/4
The dark wedge-shapes visible on the two wheels are the solid-fuel rockets.

A film of this thing in operation exists but I have not been able to track it down so far.

The Panjandrum: 1943/4
The panjandrum comes to rest on its side on the beach after a less than successful test run.

The final trial was in early January 1944, and was ludicrously unsuccessful. The idea was dropped.
But was there a little more to it than that? It has been suggested several times that in view of the very public trials it was actually a piece of misdirection, and part of FORTITUDE SOUTH, the ambitious and highly successful operation to convince the Germans that the D-day invasion would be in the Pas de Calais. This was the most formidable part of the "Atlantic Wall" where the Great Panjandrum might just conceivably have been useful; the actual landings were made on the less heavily fortified Normandy beaches. The astonishing lack of security at the Westward Ho tests makes this a tempting hypothesis- after all, the technology so disclosed would not exactly useful be useful to the Germans.
However, nobody seems to know the real answer to this one.

THE VEREYCKEN DIWHEEL: 1947

The Vereycken Diwheel: 1947
Driving this diwheel is clearly no laughing matter.

The Vereycken Diwheel: 1947
Aha! This is clearly the same diwheel as that shown above.
For some time this machine has been unidentified. Now, thanks to research done by Stephen Ransom, it can be revealed that it was patented in Belgium in 1947 by Edouard Vereycken, who gave an address in Brussels. The patent number is 473,555 and is titled “Véhicule à deux roues solidaires l’une de l’autre” . The patent was filed on 29 May 1947.
116 mph? I think not!
The "Italian engineer" attribution also seems to be wrong. Edouard Vereycken sounds very much like a Belgian name to me.

The Drivetrain of the Vereycken Diwheel: 1947
Taken from the patent drawings. Unfortunately what is going on here is far from clear, and certainly not patently obvious. There is clearly a differential between the two wheels, but the rest is obscure.
Diagram courtesy of Stephen Ransom.

THE POPULAR SCIENCE DIWHEEL

Diwheel on the cover of Popular Science.
That looks suspiciously like a rudder at the back- something a diwheel should not need.
Unfortunately I have no info on this at all, not even the year of publication.

EZEKIEL'S WHEEL: 1980s

This is called "Ezekiel's Wheel,"
It was built somewhere in the Missouri Ozarks, probably in the 1980s. It has a small industrial motor for power. The two brass levers in front of the seat on the right control the power split to each wheel, for steering.
The current owner is Warren Hunting of Lone Jack, Missouri, who I have tried to contact without success. I hope he doesn't mind me using the picture.
The reference is to visions of wheels in the first chapter of Ezekiel, Old Testament.

Image courtesy of Peter Zilliox.

A SWEDISH DIWHEEL: 1999

This machine was built by some Swedish students at Gothenburg, and has taken part in Summer parades since 1999.
Further info from Jonas Björkholtz (the designer)
Engine: 2-cyl 2-stroke snowscooter engine of 400cc
Diameter: 1.96m
Width: 1.3m

A brilliant movie clip of this machine (including some gerbilling) can be found at: http://www.mtek.chalmers.se/~johjes/doc/hjulet.mpeg

Note the large number of idler wheels around the circumference compared with other designs on this page.
The designer's explanation regarding the large number of idler wheels: "think 'ball-bearing'. In Gothenburg we have an quite well known manufacturer, SKF."