Customer Reviews

Next Great Thing

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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.

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.