VisioRacer – The Napier Deltic 2-Stroke Diesel Engine
An evening pause: A bit of technological history for the geeks out there. The complexity and precision required, all designed before computers, is incredible.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Old Machine Press has a nifty article on these.
That is some crazy complex engineering, lots and lots of components. An example of government identifying an essential need, a lightweight high output motor and that need was filled by competition that drove innovation. Government has its place.
Complex, powerful, and beautiful all the same.
Here are some more examples of engineering, not as complex but a higher level of technology also aesthetically beautiful designs. Not exactly working as intended though and they may through intrusive radical government agenda insistence bankrupt the entire American auto industry? We will find out in not too long a time IMO.
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/electric-madates-to-cause-auto-maker-bankruptcies
There was a video of a working scale model of this, built by a retired machinist who machined all the parts in his home machine shop, but i can’t find it anymore. The model was about 18 inches tall.
As a kid in the UK, I saw the locomotive with one of these in it. It was stationary but running and I remember it as very noisy.
I am wankel fan