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ROBERT
STIRLING AND HIS SAFE ENGINE
Robert
Stirling was the minister at Gaiston parish church,
near Kilmarnock, Scotland, for fifty-eight years.
He was a Doctor of Divinity, and he devoted his
life to his parishioners. Yet in 1816, more than
ten years before Stephenson's Rocket was made and
sixty-two years before the internal combustion engine
was invented, he patented an entirely new type of
engine. An engine that could run on any fuel, required
little maintenance, and was safe and efficient.
The mystery, indeed the double mystery, is why it
didn't catch on, and how a full time minister of
the Church came to make such a staggering advance
in engineering science.
A gifted speaker, he lived for and was beloved by
his parishioners. He died at Galston on 6 June 1878,
leaving a heritage in his engine, which has yet
to see its true potential. Although I believe
NASA continue to study it for use in powering space
vehicles with solar energy.
Steam engines of his day would often explode, killing
and maiming those who were unlucky enough to be
standing close by, he was increasingly concerned
for the safety of his parishioners working alongside
such dangerous machines. The Stirling engine
could not explode and produced as much power as
any steam engine then in use. The “Heat Economise"
or "Air Engine" was safe, powered by the
expansion of air when heated, followed by the compression
of the air when cooled. A simple idea, the Stirling
engine contains a fixed amount of air which is transferred
back and forth between a "cold" end (often
room temperature) and a "hot" end (heated
by any source, coal, solar energy, even with the
heat from a cup of mum's tea). The "displacer
piston" moves the air or gas between the two
ends and the "power piston" changes the
internal volume as the gas expands and contracts.
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