DailyDirt: Tiny Engines That Could

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Combustion engines aren't getting much love from the media now that batteries and electric cars seem to be getting better. However, combustion engines still have a performance edge in many situations, and engines could even do better at smaller scales, too. Here are just a few microscopic engines that could power interesting devices someday.

• A microscopic combustion engine produces usable work in a strange way, but in any case, it's nice to have a new kind of actuator that's relatively powerful and fast at small scales. An applied current breaks up water into hydrogen and oxygen nanobubbles (creating an expanding volume that can push a mini-membrane piston), and combustion of these gases dissipates the volume so that an alternating current makes this little engine run. [url]
• The world's smallest steam engine is a microscopic Stirling engine that uses lasers. This little engine isn't very practical, but it might inspire other tiny engine designs that could power micromachines in the future. [url]
• Macroscopic combustion engines are about 25% energy efficient, but a nano-heat engine could be much more efficient (if it's possible to make one). A nano-heat engine can theoretically exceed the classic Carnot limit, but making a functional prototype could be tricky. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: carnot limit, combustion, engine, laser, nano-heat engine, nanobubbles, nanotech, smallest, steam engine, stirling engine

New UK Banknote Celebrates James Watt, Patent Bully and Monopolist

from the litigation-is-easier-than-innovation dept

As do many nations, England likes to put images of its great and good on banknotes. In a somewhat quixotic attempt to stem the decline of what little manufacturing remains in the country, the governor of the Bank of England has come up with the following idea:

Sir Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, has often voiced his yearning for a "rebalancing" of the economy towards neglected manufacturing, and he will put the nation's money where his mouth is next month when the Bank produces a new £50 note celebrating two pioneers of the industrial revolution.

The Bank will evoke the memory of the inventor James Watt and his Birmingham business partner, Matthew Boulton on the new note.

Here's the orthodoxy regarding Watt and Boulton's contribution to innovation and the industrial revolution, as retold by the Guardian piece about the new banknotes:

[Boulton] later went into partnership with James Watt, who took the Newcomen steam engine, then the latest design, and made a series of crucial improvements, improving its efficiency and making it more commercial.

By 1800, Watt's version [of the Newcomen steam engine] was outselling its predecessor, and they were shipping it across the world. Boulton and Watt worked together to pioneer the use of the steam engine in the cotton spinning industry; and Boulton also used Watt's engine to power minting machines, pressing coins at his Soho Mint in Birmingham, to boost the supply provided by the Royal Mint.

What's missing from this rosy picture of jolly engineers and entrepreneurs working together to apply technology for the benefit of humanity is that Watt was one of the first to exploit the monopoly power of patents to stymie innovation by others:

Once Watt's patents were secured and production started, a substantial portion of his energy was devoted to fending off rival inventors. In 1782, Watt secured an additional patent, made "necessary in consequence of ... having been so unfairly anticipated, by [Matthew] Wasborough in the crank motion". More dramatically, in the 1790s, when the superior Hornblower engine was put into production, Boulton and Watt went after him with the full force of the legal system.

During the period of Watt's patents the United Kingdom added about 750 horsepower of steam engines per year. In the thirty years following Watt's patents, additional horsepower was added at a rate of more than 4,000 per year. Moreover, the fuel efficiency of steam engines changed little during the period of Watt's patent; while between 1810 and 1835 it is estimated to have increased by a factor of five.

After the expiration of Watt's patents, not only was there an explosion in the production and efficiency of engines, but steam power came into its own as the driving force of the Industrial Revolution. Over a thirty year period steam engines were modified and improved as crucial innovations such as the steam train, the steamboat and the steam jenny came into wide usage. The key innovation was the high-pressure steam engine — development of which had been blocked by Watt's strategic use of his patent. Many new improvements to the steam engine, such as those of William Bull, Richard Trevithick, and Arthur Woolf, became available by 1804: although developed earlier these innovations were kept idle until the Boulton and Watt patent expired.

So rather than representing all that is best about invention and industrial innovation, the story of Watt and Boulton turns out to be one of how the nascent patent system was abused to prevent progress in this field. Indeed, it offers one of the best demonstrations that patents often harm everyone – even patent-holders:

Ironically, not only did Watt use the patent system as a legal cudgel with which to smash competition, but his own efforts at developing a superior steam engine were hindered by the very same patent system he used to keep competitors at bay. An important limitation of the original Newcomen engine was its inability to deliver a steady rotary motion. The most convenient solution, involving the combined use of the crank and a flywheel, relied on a method patented by James Pickard, which prevented Watt from using it. Watt also made various attempts at efficiently transforming reciprocating into rotary motion, reaching, apparently, the same solution as Pickard. But the existence of a patent forced him to contrive an alternative less-efficient mechanical device, the "sun and planet" gear. It was only in 1794, after the expiration of Pickard's patent that Boulton and Watt adopted the economically and technically superior crank.

As such, Watt and Boulton's appearance on the new £50 banknote is not so much a celebration of engineering excellence, as a timely reminder of the harm that patents and their thickets continue to wreak on true innovators today.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: currency, history, james watt, patents, steam engine, uk

Author Claims Patents Made Industrial Revolution Possible; Then Shows Why He's Wrong

from the wow dept

A bunch of folks have been submitting the story about author William Rosen appearing on The Daily Show hyping his new book about the steam engine, where he claims that the industrial revolution happened because of the ability to "own ideas."

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
William Rosen
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Admittedly, it's Jon Stewart who tries to summarize/paraphrase Rosen's thesis by saying:

Jon Stewart: You say that the big difference there was the 'democritization of inventing.' This idea that, once people owned the idea of inventing... and I guess this happened in Britain... once the idea that ideas could be yours, and you would own them, that's what opened the floodgates.

William Rosen: Exactly. Once you actually empower people to get wealthy and famous as inventors, the floodgates are open. And an Oklahoma landrush starts to begin, where everyone's chasing not land, not 40 acres, but the next new invention. And the steam engine comes along right about that time.

Nice theory. Too bad the actual research has long debunked it. The mistake that Rosen makes here is a simple one that trips up plenty of people: it's confusing correlation with causation. The problem is that when people have looked at the issue in more detail, they've actually discovered that the correlation doesn't work the way that Rosen and other patent system proponents predict. In fact, it happens the opposite way. That is, greater IP protection trails periods of greater innovation. That is, what happens is that the industrialization period or a period of great innovation happens, and then those who led the way get upset about new competitors and new upstarts, and push for greater protectionist policies to keep the competitors out of the market. In fact, Rosen's later comments highlight why intellectual property tends to slow down the rate of industrialization, rather than aid it:

William Rosen: Sustained technological innovation is incremental -- small improvements. And that was the real magic of the era: all these micro inventions from one-time blacksmiths and carpenters... And that's why a steam engine could be made to operate a toy in the first century in Alexandria, but a working one... takes a village.

Odd wording choices aside, the problem with patents is that they get in the way of this kind of incremental innovation. Patents are designed to protect the big breakthroughs... and then limit follow-on innovation for the course of the patent. If the big breakthrough is the most important thing, then you can maybe make an argument that patents make sense. But, most innovation is, as Rosen notes, about that incremental improvements, where "it takes a village." But a patent denies the "village" the opportunity to make those improvements (at least without adding a significant cost) and thus delays innovation.

In fact, this is why research into the history of the steam engine suggested that innovation on the core James Watt invention was limited until after his patents expired.

Filed Under: jon stewart, patents, steam engine, william rosen