Charles F. Taylor (1916-1997) was an American Engineer and Inventor. He spent two years of undergraduate study at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

During the Second World War, Taylor worked on VG recorders at Hathaway Instrument Company in Denver. Previously, he had worked at International Harvester at the start of the 1940's. In the 1950's and 60's he worked at Coors Porcelain in Golden Colorado. For Coors, he developed a ceramic ball press. As this was a device that their competitors, Champion Spark Plug had tried and failed for years to develop, it was an invaluable machine for Coors Porcelain. The extremely hard ceramic balls created by the press are still used today, especially in industrial grinding, particularly white pigment for paint, which metal balls would mark or stain. In the late 1960's, Taylor left Coors to work at Morse Chain (which became a division of Borg Warner) in Denver, where he stayed until the mid 1970's. Here, he worked on drive trains and transmissions, and even developed two patents for automatic transmissions in 1971 and 1973 [1,2].

Taylor's passionate hobby from 1939 on, was the development of several working prototypes of a one-wheeled vehicle. Two of these prototypes are shown being driven by him in the home movie available on this website. The vehicle was patented by him in 1964 [3] and is the main focus of this website.

Charles Taylor passed away in 1997. He was survived by his widow Ruth Taylor, daughters Mary Urry (nee Taylor), Betsy Mcgee, and son Charles Glenn.

References:
1. C. F. Taylor, Automatic Transmission, U. S. Patent No. 3,599,504. Issued August 17, 1971. Copies of this patent can be downloaded from the U.S. Patent Office Website http://www.uspto.gov/

2. C. F. Taylor, Automatic Transmission, Canadian Patent No. 932981. Issued September 4, 1973.

3. C. F. Taylor, Vehicle, U. S. Patent No. 3,145,797. Issued August 25, 1964. Copies of this patent can be downloaded from the U.S. Patent Office Website http://www.uspto.gov/

Thanks:
Much of the information on this website was supplied to us by Mary Urry. We are particularly grateful to her for supplying us with copies of the movie and the patents. Oliver O'Reilly is grateful to a former student Tony Urry (B.S. M.E. 1999) for putting him in contact with Mary and her family.

The copyright for the images and video of Charles Taylor's one-wheeled vehicle is the property of his heirs.