Hot Air Engines

This content was on my previous website that I setup in 2009 www.thehotairengine.com

I will endeavour to cover all aspects of Hot Air Engines from inventors, to manufacturers to uses in the old world and to uses in a modern world.

There have been many different types of Hot Air Engines / Stirling engines made over the years, some massive some tiny. All wonderful designs, some that made it into full scale production and others that didn’t.

The forefathers of the successful hot air engine manufacturing world are Horace Robinson, Louis Heinrici, Karl Jost, Alexander Rider, John Ericsson and many more. All having their own unique designs, some designs having two pistons and two cylinders, others having two pistons and one cylinder.

If you have any interesting information that you wish to share with the web site please let me know and I will do my best to include it.

Robinson Hot Air Engine

The Hot Air Engine History

Because the hot air engine was invented back in the late 1700s, early 1800s there is a lot of debate about who actually invented the Hot Air Engine, some say that Rev Dr Robert Stirling is the inventor of the engine, others say he wasn’t the inventor at all, he only invented the re generator for the engine.
Other sources have named different people as the inventor of the hot air engine such as Sir George Cayley.

One thing that is certain that all these men had a vision and all these men perfected the original design but, no matter who designed the engine, we should look at the inventors who followed Robert Stirling and George Cayley, those who perfected the principle and made it into a working engine.

The inventors like John Ericsson, Alexander Rider, Horace Robinson, Louis Heinrici, Karl Jost and many other inventors, for these are the men that took the principle design and made it a working engine; They made it into useful applications for running all sorts like: pumping water, running dentist drills, running sewing machines and working fans and the list goes on. These are the great minds that took the basic idea, perfected it and made it happen!