Why Inventors Can't Top The Good Old Internal-Combustion Engine

Human creativity, it seems, knows no bounds when it comes to inventing new ways to build a petroleum-based fire inside an enclosed metal space and then convert the resulting energy pulse into forward motion. Fevered brains in all societies and cultures of the world look at today's ubiquitous piston engine, the vertical motion of the pistons converted to rotary motion via a crankshaft, (the whole a temporary endpoint to a now 120 year history of continuous development) and, struck by a false epip...