Renowned energy expert, Vaclav Smil, launched his new website this week which offers access to many of his publications and information about his numerous published books. In addition to being required reading for Breakthrough Staff and Breakthrough Generation Fellows, Smil's work is widely acclaimed, most recently by Bill Gates, who highly recommended three of Smil's books on his blog.
From Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties (2003):
"None of us knows what lies ahead. What we know is that our uses of energy that define and sustain our physical well-being and allow for an unprecedented exercise of our mental capacities will be the key ingredients in shaping that unknown future."
Dear Prof. Smil
First I want to thank you for writing PRIME MOVERS OF GLOBALIZATION. It tells a much needed story, and I agree completely with your premises.
Also, I wish to thank you for citing two of my books INTERNAL FIRE and DIESEL'S ENGINE. (I was pleased to note that your chapter 3 used the latter title.
If MIT Press should issue a second edition I would appreciate it if several errata could be corrected:
P 27, Para. 2: I am quite sure that the Honda Civic did not derive its name from the CVCC combustion process.
P. 38, Para. 2: It was really the General Motors Resarch Lab which did the original TEL work.
P. 38, Para. 3: It should be General Motors and not GE. Tom Midgely, as well as "Boss Kett" were good friends of my father. (Midgeley used to send sample bottles of pure TEL to him when he was racing speed boats in the early 1920s using surplus WW1 Liberty engines!)
P. 39, Para 2: 800,000 MILES is now almost the norm before overhaul. Many go 900,000 miles before this. "200,000 km" is nothing.
(P. 48: In my many visits to the MAN Archives beginning in 1972 I have had occasion to hold Diesel's pill box in my hands and have perused all of his correspondence up to his death. These visits included lasting friendships with 5 in a row of the Archivists.
P. 74, Para. 2, Line 7: It should read "two-stroke diesels for trucks" and not cars.
P. 74, last Para.: The engines were 1,300 hp each totalling the 5,200 bhp for the four.
P. 77, Para. 3: Dad demonstrated a potential passenger car diesel in 1935 (an Auburn
convertible)and not the late 1930s. Also, the home office and main factories are in Columbus, INDIANA and not OH.
P. 77, last Para.: Saurer was in Arbon, Switzerland and not Germany. (Been there a number of times. A good friend was head of Saurer diesel research in the 1970s.)
P. 92, 3rd l. from bott.: Heinkel's gas turbine engine was an AXIAL FLOW and not centrifugal flow as Whittle's was. (Another dear but now departed friend, Max Bentele, was in on the wartime development of the Heinkel jet engine. His very interesting memoir, ENGINE REVOLUTIONS, published by SAE a number of year ago, gives a fascinating account of this and other German jet engine developments. Max later brought the Wankel engine to the US and became head of that development for Curtiss-Wright.)
I am no stranger to errata with an embarrassing one occurring in the 1st ed. of INTERNAL FIRE: I said "Charles A." instead of "Thomas A. Edison!"
By the way, my 3rd ed. I published in 2002 has some interesting new material. Unfortunately, these are gone as is DIESEL'S ENGINE and my biography of Dad, THE DIESEL ODYSSEY OF CLESSIE CUMMINS. My latest, and final book, DIESELS FOR THE FIRST STEALTH WEAPON: SUBMARINE POWER 1902-1945 I published in 2007 under my dba Carnot Press. (750 p. 450 photos & drawings, US$35. Alas, another tome.)
Again, thank you for writing PRIME MOVERS OF GLOBALIZATION
Sincerely.
Posted by: Lyle Cummins at March 3, 2011 3:27 PMLyle Cummins