The Re-Inventors

It's a giant, one-wheeled beast of a bike that a rider pedals from within. Patented in 1897, it is one of many inventions created to improve on the original design of the safety bike, a design that has changed very little in the past 120 years. The Monowheel certainly looks intriguing, but the Re-Inventors need to know if it will ride. Its success or failure will come down to the 3 S's: Speed, Stability and Safety.

Can you actually improve on the inventions of Da Vinci? Matt and Jeremy aim to find out as they take four re-invented weapons from past episodes (including two from Leonardo) and rethink, redesign, and rebuild them using modern technology. A 15th Century tank and machine gun, a giant medieval catapult, and an ancient Chinese flamethrower get 21st Century updates. But will the added muscle translate to success on the battlefield? Modifying the old weapons is one thing, testing them is quite another.

It was designed to ride across sand, steamroll over barbed wire and blast holes though Hitler’s coastal defenses in Normandy, but D-Day came early for the Pajandrum. The invention was deemed useless and never saw action in the field of war. But given the chance, could it have saved the lives of countless Allied soldiers? Matt and Jeremy call on the skills of metal fabricators, carpenters, and explosives experts to rebuild and test this unconventional weapon. Will they figure out where the original inventors went wrong or will the Panjandrum crash and burn?

For decades, man has moved snow from one side of the road to another in order to clear a path for drivers, but wouldn’t it be better to just eliminate it instead? In 1939, a patent was issued to the “Snow Annihilating Machine.” Part tank, part furnace, it featured a conveyor belt of steam pipes that would rotate through an oven before hitting the snowy surface. No one ever built a prototype, but 70 years later, the Re-Inventors will finally give this bizarre machine a long overdue road test.

Modern crematoriums use 54 gallons of propane to reduce just one body to ash, so the environmental value of a solar crematorium is self-evident. But can this late 1980s invention generate the heat necessary to get the job done? Matt and Jeremy are dead-set on finding out. Join in on a darkly humorous episode where dead inventions for dead people are reincarnated and tested, including one that forces Matt to be buried alive! Will sunlight really turn a human body to ash or should this invention remain six feet under?

Two 1915 inventions designed to save soldiers’ lives in World War I were never called into battle. Were they simply not-so-great inventions of The Great War, or were they never given a fair shot? The Re-Inventors unearth the old patents for a bulletproof enclosure and a dual-purpose helmet shield, and dig up period materials from the early 1900s to rebuild and test them both. Could these inventions have saved the lives of countless U.S. soldiers, or were they rightly discharged from service? Matt and Jeremy aim to find out.