THE MASTER WORKER 



workshops. Reference may be made, however, to a 

 rotary engine which was invented by a Mr. Hoffman, 

 of Buffalo, New York, about the beginning of the 

 twentieth century, an example of which was put into 

 actual operation in running the machinery of a shop 

 in Buffalo, in 1905. 



This engine consists of a solid elliptical shaft of steel, 

 fastened to an axle at one side of its centre, which axis 

 is also the shaft of the cylinder, which revolves about 

 the central ellipse in such a way that at one part of the 

 revolution the cylinder surface fits tightly against the 

 ellipse, while the opposite side of the cylinder supplies 

 a free chamber between the ellipse and the cylinder walls. 

 Running the length of the cylinder are two curved pieces 

 of steel, like longitudinal sections of a tube. These 

 flanges are adjusted at opposite sides of the cylinder and 

 so arranged that their sides at all times press against the 

 ellipse, alternately retreating into the substance of the 

 cylinder, and coming out into the free chamber. Steam 

 is admitted to the free chamber through one end of the 

 shaft of ellipse and cylinder and exhausted through 

 the other end. The pressure of the steam against first 

 one end and then the other of the flanges supplies the 

 motive power. This pressure acts always in one di- 

 rection, and the entire apparatus revolves, the cylinder, 

 however, revolving more rapidly than the central ellipse. 



For this engine the extravagant claim is made that 

 there is no limit to its speed of revolution, within the 

 limit of resistance of steel to centrifugal force. It has 

 been estimated that a locomotive might be made to run 

 two hundred or three hundred miles an hour without 



