THE Stirling engine, the brainchild of a 19th-century Scottish clergyman, is an invention that seems cursed by the gods of innovation neither to succeed nor to fail comprehensively and thus be forgotten. In 1816 Robert Stirling patented a device he hoped would sweep aside the then-dominant "atmospheric" steam engine. Instead of a messy process of using steam to make a vacuum beneath a piston, thus causing atmospheric pressure to drive the piston down, Stirling's version (illustrated) uses the he...
THE Stirling engine, the brainchild of a 19th-century Scottish clergyman, is an invention that seems cursed by the gods of innovation neither to succeed nor to fail comprehensively and thus be forgotten. In 1816 Robert Stirling patented a device he hoped would sweep aside the then-dominant "atmospheric" steam engine. Instead of a messy process of using steam to make a vacuum beneath a piston, thus causing atmospheric pressure to drive the piston down, Stirling's version (illustrated) uses the he...
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