Cycling Patents of Yesteryear: No. 7 – Evan S. Connell Jr’s Bicycle Attached Toy Machine Gun, 1951

After last week’s post on small arms and cyclists this patent from the 1950’s seems an apt one with which to follow. The invention of one Evan S. Connell Jr of Santa Cruz California, a bicycle mounted toy machine gun that could be aimed in any direction along the horizontal and vertical plane, and which, in a variant of the playing card and peg, used a leaf spring connected to the gun trigger to make the firing noise of the machine gun, the spring running against the spokes when the trigger was pulled.

E. S. Connell Jr’s bicycle mounted toy machine gun. US Patent 2,667,720

I would have loved this as a kid. Like many children of my age, my friends and I defeated legions of Nazi soldiers, hordes of Imperial Stormtroopers, bands of vikings, armies of knights, and countless monsters and robots. And all with the aid of cheap plastic toy firearms that made gun noises that were as unconvincing as our verbalized attempts. We also played our own version of Rollerball, minus the death but with a few scrapes and bruises, where this toy gun would have come in handy. But it was playing Judge Dredd where this would have really come into its own, turning our bicycles into the Lawmaster, the Mega-city Judges twin-cannon, laser wielding AI street bikes. Or at least it would have in our land of make-believe. Oh, how those perps would have suffered!

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