#solar engine

I can never make Altoids can projects. It’s a like a crazy road block. People have stuck all sorts of projects in these, even an Altair computer! I get parts all lined out I place them, plan out a circuit then, put the project in a regular enclosure or make the circuit to big because I get into it and keep added features.

One of the projects I tried was a BEAM (biology, electronics, aesthetics, and mechanics) robot with one of these cans as it’s body. I absolutely love BEAM robots. They are designed using mainly analog circuits to try and mimic basic life behaviors. In most cases it’s to look for food (light source). Here are two heart beat (solar engine) ones from my stash.

They are great because they are made from junk salvaged parts. The circuits for these is below, it uses a flashing LED. The design is not mine I literally got it from one of those maker style fair activities.

Today’s #TechTuesday invention is a solar engine from the 1907 pamphlet The Direct Acting Solar Engine: The Prime Mover of the Immediate Future. 

When engineer Frank Shuman (1862-1918) built his first solar engine in 1897, he was already an accomplished inventor, having and secured patents related to the production of a wire-supported safety glass to make the skylights, popular in the architecture of his time, more secure. 

Following this achievement, Shuman’s uncle, Frank Schumann, president of the Tacony Iron & Metal Works in Philadelphia, brought his nephew to Philadelphia. Uncle Schumann’s company had been contracted to cast a 37-foot tall statue of William Penn to sit atop City Hall, and the younger Shuman was tasked with developing an electroplating process to coat the statue with coats of protective aluminium.

From his new laboratories in the city’s Tacony neighborhood, Shuman began making a small working model of a solar engine, which worked by filling small boxes with ether, a substance with a low boiling rate. Small pipes conveyed the resulting energy to a steam engine. The model powered a running a small toy train outside his home, which Shuman encouraged the press and potential investors to come view during sunny days.

In 1908, after the addition of a low-pressure steam turbine and mirrors to the model’s design allowed for water to replace ether, Shuman founded the Sun Shine Power Company. The company built a full-scale working solar engine and patented it in 1912. Shuman’s invention, and his advocacy for investment and research into solar power attracted substantial attention, and was profiled in a number of scientific and popular journals and newspapers. In one of these articles, a 1914 piece in Scientific American, Shuman declared his certainty that “the human race must finally utilize direct sun power or revert to barbarism” and encouraged further research into the field for “the eternal welfare of the human race.”

On Throwback Thursday, we’re throwing back to this 1907 pamphlet promoting Philadelphia inventor Frank Shuman’s “Direct Acting Solar Engine”.  Shuman’s invention was a “hot box” used to turn water into steam for steam engines.  From the pamphlet:

“All of the coal we are burning is merely the stored-up power of the sun delivered on the earth some millions of years ago. We dig far into the ground to get this out, whereas the sun is delivering an equal power every day, right at our doors, free of all charge. It is only necessary for us to devise the proper means for receiving this infinite power and using it to advantage.”

May the slogan “If not today, then tomorrow” be the inspiration to help you tackle the rest of your work week.