henry1 --
Thanks for your comment, and I'm happy to hear that the Ingo is indeed
the scooter you are seeking. In order for an answer to be considered
"official," it has to be posted here, so I will supplement my earlier
comment with links to a couple more websites (including another image
of the Ingo), along with a description of my search strategy.
Here is the way the Ingo is described in its entry at the website of
the Bicycle Museum of America in Bremen, Ohio. An image of the device
is included with the entry about 2/3 down the page linked below:
"Named for Borg-Warner's Ingersoll Division, which produced and
marketed it, the Ingo was conceived by a pair of depression-era
inventors who got the idea watching kids on homemade scooters. The
rear hub was off-center, and when the rider pulled on the handlebars
and provided some body English, the machine propelled itself nicely.
It was originally called an Exer-Cycle because of its potential for
people in need of a light workout but who might not feel safe on a
conventional two-wheeler. The Ingo got plenty of publicity after a
fanatic rode one from New York to Miami in twelve days. It was also
featured in a "Three Stooges" comedy. And it got plenty of wartime use
when motoring was discouraged."
Bicycle Museum: Bicycles
http://www.bicyclemuseum.com/Html/main.html
And, here is a description of the Ingo from the website of the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office:
"Finally, the unique "Ingo-Bike," with its eccentrically mounted rear
wheel, represents yet another unique scooter design (Patent
#2,125,568). Although scooters with eccentrically mounted wheels were
not new, the Huyssen brothers of Chicago discovered that if the
circumference of the eccentric wheel were chosen carefully, the
scooter could be efficiently operated at speeds up to 20 MPH.
Operation required a sort of "jumping" or "rocking" motion while
standing on the platform; by choosing a proper circumference for the
eccentric wheel, the natural driving frequency of the "Ingo-Bike"
coincided with what a human operator was capable of under the
influence of gravity (just like a pogo-stick?s spring constant must be
properly selected to give it an appropriate frequency).
"The Ingo-Bike gained a certain cachet in Hollywood, particularly
since it offered a unique and stylish way of promoting physical
fitness; Carl Burgwardt sent me several ads and promotional photos
featuring stars of the ?30s (Ruby Keeler, Ralph Bellamy, Helen Morgan)
who had caught the "Ingo-Biking" bug. One magazine ad promised "the
zest of horseback riding, the fun of open sailing, the smooth, easy
speed of cycling". Of course, now that we have a "youth culture", we
rarely turn to established movie stars to keep up with what is
trendy."
Search Strategy:
I first found references to the Ingo by using the following Google searches:
scooter "up and down on"
://www.google.com/search?q=scooter+%22up+and+down+on%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=0&sa=N
scooter "jumping up and down" (searching Google Groups)
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=scooter+%22jumping+up+and+down%22+&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=ISO-8859-1
I then was able to do a focused search which turned up the rest of the
available online information:
ingo scooter
://www.google.com/search?q=%22ingo%22+scooter&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&output=search
I ended up limiting the results of this search to English-language
sites, because the term "ingo" apparently has an irrelevant meaning in
German that resulted in a few thousand unwanted "hits."
Thanks again for the opportunity to answer your question. If any of
the above is unclear, please ask for clarification before rating this
answer.
markj-ga |
