Rosco Bodine
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A relic from the Quest for Fire
Ever seen this ?
http://www.onagocag.com/piston.html
http://www.firepiston.com/
The next time somebody asks you for a light .......
http://www.firepiston.com/underwater.wmv
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Pyridinium
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Nice! These could be used by amateur chemists after matches are banned ("because they could be used to make drugs").
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Rosco Bodine
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I just learned about these fire pistons for the first time ,
unless I had heard of them before and just forgot .
It's pretty neat that these devices have origins in the
stone age , maybe even before Fred Flintstone  ,
The theory proposed is that the discovery was made by
someone ramming out the bore of a blowgun ......
and presto there was nascent fire via the Diesel effect
at least thousands of years , more probably tens of thousands of years before Rudy Diesel was born .
The story is that Diesel actually got his engine idea
from awareness of the ancient fire piston .
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franklyn
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That's really wonderful, makes you wonder what other wonders remain unknown
outside of indigenous users. I found this quote from the article amusing
" As you can probably see, this ancient firemaking machine is utilizing the Diesel
principle." it happens that Rudolph Diesel was inspired by the demonstration of
this very device when at school according to his own recollections. History of
technology was a topic I researched while at school and the ancient wonders
of Greco - Roman science. Hero of Alexandria produced a bronze 2 piston pump
instantly recognizable by any boating enthusiast as a bilge pump. I saw the
actual archeological original at the museum of natural history in Madrid. It could
have passed for modern plumbing supplies. The record is murky at best but
apparently some centuries later arab artificers utilized some principal along
this line to pump neumatically a reservoir of the fluid substance known as
greek fire producing what was the flame thrower of its day. This would work
much as a garden sprayer also utilized by exterminators.
.
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franklyn
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chief
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Diesel engines work the same way ...
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