Next Great Thing [Paperback]

Shelton Mark (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1980

Global warming, Arctic oil drilling, and the vanishing ozone layer are all enormous environmental problems with no clear solutions - or so conventional wisdom goes. But in the tiny town of Appalachian, Ohio, a small group of engineers under the guidance of a visionary eccentric named William Beale is challenging that conventional wisdom in an audacious attempt to transform the way the world makes and uses energy. Their "ultimate machine" - a solar-powered Stirling engine - resembles nothing the world has ever seen, and it carries an enormous burden of hope for the future of the planet. Should they succeed, a patch of desert 170 miles square could generate all the energy needs of the United States virtually pollution-free. Mark Shelton's exciting narrative takes us inside the laboratories and engine shops of Sunpower, Inc., where Beale and his colleagues are harnessing space-age technology to an idea as old as the steam engine. A working prototype of the Stirling engine is already capable of running an individual house, but enormous obstacles remain: lack of funding, and the preference of the American public and private sectors for getting their energy the good old-fashioned way. Like Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine, Shelton's insightful account has the inherent drama of a report from the frontier, a frontier that might well produce the next great technological advance for the human race.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sunpower Inc., founded in 1970 by William J. Beale, is a bootstrap engineering research company with a Holy Grail mission: to harness Stirling heat engine technology to applications that could save the world from carbon fuel pollution and could eliminate ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons from the atmosphere. In Shelton's lively account, Beale and his fellow engineers in Athens, Ohio, attempt to rob the second law of thermodynamics to give the world nearly free energy for basic heating, cooling and pumping operations. Also joining Beale, who emerges as a sort of second generation Buckminster Fuller, are the company's machinists and support staff--all dedicated to the cause and the process of their R & D effort. In this depiction of Sunpower's research and its ever more time absorbing and not always productive search for funding, freelancer Shelton captures the sheer sense of joy that powers these workers at technological frontiers and proves himself a technology writer on a par with Tracy Kidder.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In a college town in southern Ohio, a small company is battling the odds to develop a solar-powered Stirling engine, an alternative energy source that could revolutionize the way the world makes and uses energy. While this technology has been around since the 19th century, practical application has been elusive. Shelton, author of Working in a Very Small Place: The Making of a Neurosurgeon ( LJ 6/1/89) and an LJ reviewer, records here the time he spent with Sunpower, Inc. and its people, relating their struggles to accomplish the dreams of the owner, William Beale, a tireless visionary enthusiast who is much more engineer than businessman. There is also a great deal of information about energy production, solar thermal energy technology, and the politics and frustrations of dealing with the Department of Energy and potential corporate sponsors. While the book is written for a general audience, its technical matter gets a bit heavy at times for the uninitiated. For larger science and technology collections. (Illustrations not seen.)-- Donald Marion, Science & Engineering Lib., Minneapolis
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 276 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. (January 1, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393334031
• ISBN-13: 978-0393334036
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #464,976 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars To Change the World, June 11, 2002

By 

Robert Tso (So. SanGabriel, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Next Great Thing: The Sun, the Stirling Engine, and the Drive to Change the World (Hardcover)

An amazing and inspiring story of a small, driven R&D engineering company that struggles to convert theory into working hardware, make the bridge from doing "research" to "building products", that eventually pulls itself out of operating on the brink of bankruptcy, while offering the world a clean, renewable source of energy, the Solar Heated Free Piston Stirling Engine. Shelton does a great job in conveying the personalities, the financial and technical challenges overcome, and the dramatic events that allowed Sunpower to survive through some very trying times.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent engineering study, March 11, 2011

By 

Edward Breslin (honolulu) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Next Great Thing (Paperback)

Very surprised to see only one review of this excellent study(a narrative case study ) of engineering and entrepreneur work. The book describes an attempt to design.fabricate and sell an innovative Stirling cycle engine to generate solar electricity. It is very well written and clearly(and technically) describes the challenges and frustrations of innovative engineering design. Highly recommended for would be inventors or prospective engineers and is very interesting for anyone interested in technology. the book was written in 1994 and i first read it around then, and recently reread it with the same pleasure. I really would like to see an update on this concept; we still seem to be struggling with alternatives to traditional power sources... the stirling concepts in this book made sense in 94 and still make sense today unless there is really something i am missing. i know the stirling has been tried and tried again to find a home (Ford Motors in the 70s etc) in common usage but no widespread application so far as i know. Maybe it will always be the next great thing....read the book and decide for yourself.. Highly recommended.