Stanley's Dream Makes a Comeback

Abstract

Shortly before the turn of the century, the great automobile race began. Three types of engines pulled away from the starting gate: internal combustion, steam and battery. For a while all three were fender to fender, but then the internal-combustion engine began to pour on the gas and pull ahead. By World War I, it had left all its competitors choking in its exhaust. And by the 1960's, it was doing the same thing to American cities, and a brand-new race had begun. Singled out as the chief villain in air pollution, the internal-combustion engine looks behind today and sees the steam car-although 20 years back-in serious pursuit. Promising the same or greater efficiency, less noise, less cost and less pollution, the steam engine once more a legitimate rival, made more so by President Nixon's August promise of Federal aid for the development of unconventional car engines. Although technology of the steam car grew rusty in the past seven decades, and the effort expended on it came nowhere near that lavished on the internalcombustion engine, work did not cease entirely. Steam cars continued to be produced right up to today, although commercial production ceased after 1925. The most celebrated steam carthough no more than 12,000 were sold -was the Stanley Steamer invented by the Stanley brothers and produced until 1925. Its most memorable achievement came in 1906, when the wheeled teakettle set an automobile speed record of 127.66 miles per hour. Another steam the White, produced by the White Sewing Machine Company from 1901 to 1910, made an important contribution when it extended water mileage from 40 to 100 miles by installing a condenser so water could be recycled. It was followed by the Rolls Royce of steam cars, the Doble, named for its inventor Abner Doble. Thirty-five Dobles were produced from 1910 to 1934, but their importance lies in the advances they made in steam car engineering and ease of operation. Further improvements were incorporated in the 1953 Paxton, which was only shop-tested, and the single Williams (Williams Engine Company, Ambler, Pa.) built in 1960 and still in operation today. The reasons for the first steam cars' demise and the internal-combustion engine's ascendancy include short water mileage, boiler explosions, long and arduous start-up time, complicated operation and not least of all, lack of mass-production techniques which could have brought down the cost. But if it now true, as ROAD TEST magazine contended in February 1968, that . . there no doubt that the technology here today to build a steam powered car equal to or better than the internal-combustion engine car, then what stands in the way? Detroit for one. The auto makers have an estimated $8 billlion invested in present production facilities, too much to scrap for steam car production. And the high entrance fee has precluded outside competition. Based on joint hearings in May 1968 before the Senate Committee on Commerce and the Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution, in which leading engineers and representatives of the auto industry testified, the Senate Commerce Committee issued a report in March criticizing Detroit's myopic persistence in holding up the development of a steam car and concluded that such a car is a satisfactory alternative to the present internalcombustion Ever conservative-if not downright hostile-the auto makers contend that a steam car would cost more, weigh more and be larger than a conventional auto. But there are two sides to that. Dr. Robert U. Ayres of International Research and Technology Corp., a Washington, D.C., consulting firm, argues that because of simpler construction-steam cars would have fewer parts -they would cost less to produce. As for weight and size, these two drawbacks were caused by the bulky steam generator (boiler). The use of small diameter tubing could reduce boiler size as could using molten salt as a heat reservoir since less steam would be necessary to produce heat energy, hence less bulk. In short, no new fundamental research needed, only a little work in design to make a steam engine the size of an internal-combustion engine. Further, by heating water in a coiled tube rather than a kettle-like boiler, tubed steam generators eliminate the danger of boiler explosion, something accomplished by Abner Doble in 1917 but which steam critics still allude to. The principle of the steam car a GM Research