HOME

L A Mair
publications








Order books
Some book reviews of John Fox Jennens Malone.
From ENGINEERING IN MINIATURE. August, 2008.
John Fox Jennens Malone - The Liquid Stirling Engine.
Paperback - 73 pages.
Author Robert Sier.
ISBN 978-0-9526417-2-8.

This is a most unusual book, part biography part technical. It covers the work of a very obscure self taught victorian engineer. John Fox Jennens Malone who designed and built, amongst other machines, an engine to run on the Stirling principle, but instead of using gas as the working medium it used liquid at very high temperatures. We are all taught at college that liquids are incompressible, but Malone believed that liquids at high temperatures were indeed compressible and although the volume change was small the pressure change was significant. Engines were built and run, patents granted, but the idea never caught on. Apparently due to politics and vested interests. A special boiler was built on the Benson principle but this failed due mainly to metalluirgical problems, the LMS 'FURY' also failed to poor undersatnding of high temperature metallurgy
To all mechanical engineering students and Stirling engine modellers this book should surely be a must. It may be a load of hot air, or in this case hot liquid I could not possibly comment. Read it and make up your own mind. It is lateral thinking from engineers like Malone that one day may save us all from global warming.