Mother's Minto Wheel: A Report

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And it was a sad disappointment to find, contrary to Minto's confident prediction that our wheel would work on a temperature difference of "three to twenty degrees", that we had to fire our "heater"—a water tank that enveloped the circular engine's bottom edge—up to a temperature difference of 70°F . . . even 100°F. And when you're heating water to as much as 180°F to make a wheel turn, you might as well heat it on up to 212° or so and run a real steam engine.

It also becomes quickly apparent to anyone who fools around with one of these wheels that the blamed thing will run better if heat is applied to its rim not on the bottom, but somewhere in the range of 15 to 30 degrees up its "back" side. And that immediately rules out water and throws you—if you want to use the sun as your energy input—on the mercy of parabolic reflectors which have to be rigged to track Ole Sol across the sky and other complications that, again, make you sorta suspect that "ordinary" sun-powered steam engines are a better bet than the Minto wheel.

And that's where we stand on the whole idea right now. Although we sincerely wish otherwise, we've just spent $12,000 proving that the Minto wheel isn't really a practical solar-powered engine. Waste heat from other sources might be a different story . . . but forget running the backwoods homestead on a sun-powered wheel.

We've stuck our necks out . . . so that you can now invest your money in flat-plate collectors, Steve Baer's skylids, and all the other solar hardware that past performance has shown does work. But we don't mind. That's what we're here for. That's what MOTHER's research facilities are all about. Next idea, please.

And, Wally Minto, we still love you. Because a heck of a lot of your other ideas have delivered the goods as advertised.

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