The multi-fueled vehicle of the future:

trof

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Mon Mar-27-06 05:02 PM
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The multi-fueled vehicle of the future:

Steam Man Mark II
It's boiler can be fueled by coal, oil, wood, corncobs, old newspapers, or any other flammable scrap materials you may have lying about.

This new Steam Man's engine was nearly twice as efficient as its predecessor's. The improvements in hydraulics and lighter-weight alloys used in constructing the automaton gave the Mark II greater speed and strength than the original.

From Frank Reade's journal:

"The lamp will be in his head, and his eyes will be the headlights. His mouth holds the steam whistle. In his belly, we open a door and put in fuel, and the ashes fall down into his legs and are emptied from the movable knee-pan, and without injury to the oiled leg shafts, for they are enclosed in a tube. That is why the fellow's limbs are so large. Wire cords increase the power in one leg, and cause that leg to go much faster, and in that manner we get a side movement and can turn around. Its feet are spiked like a base-ball player's are spiked, to prevent the machine from slipping under speed. The legs are very long and very far apart, so as to give it balance A stop-cock on the side will let on or shut off steam.
"I am making a low, broad, and very heavy wagon for the contrivance, and it will be finished in a few days. The hands of the man will hold the shafts of the wagon. The vehicle will carry two or three persons and hold fuel and water, sufficent for several days, and I have made a tent-like covering for the concern so that I could sleep in the wagon if I ever went on a journey. In the knapsack are my steam valves; the top of the hat is only a sieve, and the smoke will come out of that. There's drafts and stop-offs without number. The steam gauge is in the fellow's back. It can go fifty miles in one hour, on a level road I should not hesitate to run it at thirty or thirty-five an hour."

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