WI Sterling Engine invented during Renaissance?

tallwingedgoat

No invention was as important to the Industrial Revolution than the Watt steam engine. I was thinking what the world would be like had its invention taken place earlier. However it occures to me the Watt engine is a little too sophisticated for it to be invented much earlier than it did. Furthermore the steam engine required a fairly large number of skilled operators for it to be widely assimilated in scale.

The Sterling hot air engine on the other hand was much simpler and anyone who knows how to boil water can run it. It can never be as powerful as the steam engine, so locomotives would be unlikely. None the less it would work well in light industry, water pump, grain processor, textile spinner, etc.

Was the world ready for the Sterling engine? What kind of impact would we expect?
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Try building one with mediaeval tolerances!

tallwingedgoat said:
No invention was as important to the Industrial Revolution than the Watt steam engine. I was thinking what the world would be like had its invention taken place earlier. However it occures to me the Watt engine is a little too sophisticated for it to be invented much earlier than it did. Furthermore the steam engine required a fairly large number of skilled operators for it to be widely assimilated in scale.

The Sterling hot air engine on the other hand was much simpler and anyone who knows how to boil water can run it. It can never be as powerful as the steam engine, so locomotives would be unlikely. None the less it would work well in light industry, water pump, grain processor, textile spinner, etc.

Was the world ready for the Sterling engine? What kind of impact would we expect?
Click to expand...
 

tallwingedgoat

DuQuense said:
Tell that to the Swedes, who use them to run their Submarines.
Click to expand...

The Kockums engines are made using technology unavaliable to earlier times. For example liquid oxygen, nitrogen, helium, and high temperature resistant alloys. It's still nowhere near as powerful as an old fashioned steam engine, being used to charge batteries rather as direct drive of a ship.

A simple Sterling engine should be possible with Da Vinci era technology. A demonstration model can be made with nothing more than soup cans and duct tape. Considering they were able to make wheellocks at the time, precision machining should be adaquet. It's not a terribly complicated machine. Which is why I think it would be doable pre-steam engine era. Pitty the Sterling was invented late in the game.
 

carlton_bach

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
Try building one with mediaeval tolerances!
Click to expand...

You mean 32 stitches to the inch?

Medieval *craftsmanship* is easily up to building any kind of mechanical machine that works within tolerances visible to the human eye. The problem is that each one will be one-of-a-kind.

Well, that and the fact that you still have to come up with the idea and make the investment worthwhile. But realising it is not the problem. Scaling up numbers will be.
 

cerebus

Stirling engine CAN be built using poor tolerances and materials but efficiency depends critically on the pressure, temperature differential, good heat exchange and the gas used. In other words a renaissance Striling Engine would be a toy that could not easily be scaled up or improved since that would require physical, chemical and engineering advances.

Oddly even a poor steam expansion engine seems to scale up quite well.

Now if Da Vinici (Who else:D) pulled such an idea out of his hat I suspect it would just be a curiosity, even if remembered at all.

However suppose by 1700's the idea of the engine is widely known. Bada Boom kick start industrial revolution, improved thermodynamics, factories, Railways, Zeppalins, monorails .... well you get the picture.
 

tallwingedgoat

Early on the industrial revolution was just a textile revolution. The advantage of the steam engine over the ancient waterwheel was that it would be used in places without a river. This meant textile production was able to spread throughout Britain rather than be limited to a few areas. Cheap textile was great for trade and the profits was a shot in the arm for the British Empire.

The Sterling engine was less powerful than steam engine and couldn't do the bigger jobs later on the IR, but spinning cotton it can do. If invented during the Italian Renaissance it could make the Italian principalities a lot richer and more influencial. It would probably mean the Renaissance would spread through Europe much faster.

Since Italy has so many hot springs, I wonder if they could design really big sterling engines to run on geothermal energy.
 

Matthais Corvinus

As I recall the Watts was invented for clearing water out of mines. So maybe Tyrol would be a good place to start with? It not there, and your thinking along the lines of areas where there is a large amount of capital, and lots of textiles, look not to Italy, but to the Netherlands. The "Low Countries" have been a textile center for centuries, and would have large and economically innovative communities of merchants (Antwerp, Brussels, Amsterdam) who would clearly the see the advantages of spinning cloth faster. If you do it during the early Renaissance, say mid 15th century, you could even marry this to a surviving Burgundy, and instead of "European Gunpowder Empire" you could have "European Steam Empire" circa late 1400's. Now the Swiss don't stand a chance against Charles the Bold's steam-powered siege engines . . . and Charles the Bold could "steamroll" right through the machinations of the Universal Spider in Paris . . .
 

tallwingedgoat

Matthais Corvinus said:
As I recall the Watts was invented for clearing water out of mines.
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That was the Newcomen steam engine, which predated the Watt. The Sterling isn't a steam engine, it's simpler and uses hot air without needing to build steam to high pressure. But it can certainly pump water out of mines. In fact before the electric generator came along, lots of farms used Sterling water pumps.
 

simonbp

Well, both the Watt steam engine and the Sterling engine required some knowledge of thermodynamics to build. In fact, it was applying this new field of "atmospheric theory" (as thermodynamics was called then) to Newcomen's intuitively designed engine that made James Watt rich and famous. Sterling only invented his engine in 1816 by applying the theory that Watt and others used to develop high-pressure steam engines. Someone coming up with the Sterling cycle earlier on is pretty unlikely...

Simon ;)
 
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