It's Monday and I'm back. I spent the weekend looking through material for today's post and coming up with many possibilities. Remember, I am easily distracted. I have found that about the best music to do the nasty work of keeping the fires burning at the Barn is by far the wonderful streaming audio from CBC, in particular the Signal with Laurie Brown. Heard every evening from 10pm onwards, but because of the time zones you can pick it up as early as 6pm. Want to hear what I'm listening to? Click on this - http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/mediaPlayer.html?ATLANTIC_HI
Anyway, this post's title hides a rather interesting story. Ægidius Elling was a Norwegian inventor who is credited with if not inventing, at least figuring out, the gas turbine engine.
For those of you non techies out there, that's a real jet engine. His original patent for this engine came out in 1884. Trouble is, as he progressed through the theoretical to the practical he realized that there was few materials out there that could hold up to the high temperatures that modern jet engines produced. He was, in essence, making a modern jet engine in 1903.
Issues with safety and reliability prevented the jet engine from moving beyond Ellings prototypes. It would be over 2o years later when British engineer Frank Whittle patented a workable engine in 1932.
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