The Next Great Thing: The Sun, the Stirling Engine, and the Drive to Change the World

by Mark Shelton

Global warming, Arctic oil drilling, and the vanishing ozone layer are all enormous environmental problems with no clear solutions - or so conventional wisdom goes. But in the tiny town of Appalachian, Ohio, a small group of engineers under the guidance of a visionary eccentric named William Beale is challenging that conventional wisdom in an audacious attempt to transform the way the world makes and uses energy. Their "ultimate machine" - a solar-powered Stirling engine - resembles nothing the world has ever seen, and it carries an enormous burden of hope for the future of the planet. Should they succeed, a patch of desert 170 miles square could generate all the energy needs of the United States virtually pollution-free. Mark Shelton's exciting narrative takes us inside the laboratories and engine shops of Sunpower, Inc., where Beale and his colleagues are harnessing space-age technology to an idea as old as the steam engine. A working prototype of the Stirling engine is already capable of running an individual house, but enormous obstacles remain: lack of funding, and the preference of the American public and private sectors for getting their energy the good old-fashioned way. Like Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine, Shelton's insightful account has the inherent drama of a report from the frontier, a frontier that might well produce the next great technological advance for the human race.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It is about Sunpower Inc. it's passionate Founder, William J. Beale, and a group of engineers and machinists who in the 70's goal was to build Stirling Engines that would generate baseline utility power from the sun. Much like what is be considered today 8) www.unitedsunsystems.com .

A story of tight budgets, building stirling engines on spec for companies who may or may not use them, personalities, and trying to achive a nonfunded big dream.

This reminded me of Soul of a New Machine but with a nobler aim.

[Metin Ozsavran · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another failure story about the supposed high efficiency engine mirage of hope, baiting us with deceased british Monk Stirling. İts good for learning about thermodynamics too. Hope Sunpower İnc. finally succeeds after shedding decades and decades of blood.