Ivan Elmanov

Ivan Kirillovich Elmanov was a Russian inventor who is remembered for a single early experiment in rail transport. In 1820, in Myachkovo near Moscow, he built what the source describes as a road on pillars: a single rail made of timber balks laid on top of upright supports. Wheels ran along this wooden rail, and the horse-drawn carriage that used it carried a sled on its top, so that the animal and the vehicle travelled along one elevated line rather than on the ground. Because the arrangement used one rail instead of two, it is considered to be the first known monorail in the world, which places Elmanov in the early history of elevated and single-rail guided transport. The article that records him is brief and gives no dates of birth or death, so those are left open here rather than guessed.