Who was the Rev. Robert Stirling anyway?
Robert Stirling was a minister of the Church of Scotland who was interested in the health of his parishioners bodies in addition to the well being of their souls. He invented the Stirling engine (he called it an “air engine”) because steam engines of his day would often explode killing and maiming those who were unlucky enough to be standing close by. Robert Stirling’s engines couldn’t explode and produced more power than the steam engines then in use. In 1816 he received his first patent for a new type of “air engine”. The engines he built and those that followed eventually became known as “hot air engines” and continued to be known called hot air engines until the 1940’s when other gasses such as helium and hydrogen were used as the working fluid. Robert Stirling was an active minister and inventor all his life. Perhaps his most important invention was the “regenerator” or “economizer” as he called it. This is used today in Stirling engines and many other industrial processes to save
