Could Stirling engines have been developed for airship or hybrid car
use in the 1910 - 1920 period, or was the technology of the time too
primitive?
Could such engines have been developed 20 years later?
I ask this because one of my interests is of `inventions after their
time', that is to say, inventions that technically could have been
made earlier than they were, but which no one thought of.
One example is the hot air balloon: a hot air balloon could have been
built and flown 4000 years before one was built. At least one ancient
person, the Pharaoh, could have afforded it. Moreover, he could have
followed the same false physics the Montgolfier brothers followed, and
simply observed that smoke rises.
Another thought: the use of a Stirling engine for a car or airship is
not so much an `invention' as a `development'.
Is it more fair to ask whether the lack of Stirling engined cars and
airships is the result of other technologies gaining a sufficient
functionality first, and then the cost of switching becoming too
high?
Both our base 10 numerical system and QWERTY keyboard layouts are
examples of the latter.
A modern numerical notation could have been invented earlier than it
was. The modern system uses a notation in which a small range of
numbers have different values depending on their position -- 1 on the
one's position, 10 times that value in the ten's position, 100 times
that value in the hundred's position, and so on.
This is an example of an `invention after its time'.
However, a base 12 counting system would have been much better; but
base 10 became the standard and the cost of shifting is too high.
The more recent adoption of the QWERTY typewriter layout for writers
using English-language typewriters and computer keyboards is another
example of `premature standardization'. Initially, the layout was
adopted to prevent key jams. But typewriter technology advanced, so
key jams became less of a problem. But the layout remained in use.
Another query:
Would a Stirling engine work well in a hybrid vehicle? Would its
efficiency be much better than the efficiency of a vehicle using an
internal combustion engine?
What would be the cost to the various auto manufacturers of
replacing the skills and equipment they use now to manufacture
internal combustion engines with the the skills and equipment
necessary to manufacture Stirling engines for a hybrid?
Technical query:
Am I right in thinking that the movements of the two pistons for a
basic Stirling engine are 90 degrees out of phase? As far as I can
see, that is right, and I have written up a description, and created
plain text, ASCII, diagrams, of how a Stirling engine works based on
that phase difference. But I want to make sure I am really right.
--
Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises
http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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