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Steam Engine Efficiency Graph

It's not the first exponential improvement in a technology, by the way. This has been on my CUUG web site since 1995 - an exponential improvement in steam engine efficiency over 300 years, it doubled every sixty - from 32 pounds of coal per horsepower-hour down to one. James Watt's real fame wasn't inventing the engine, it was jumping ahead 60 years on the curve and making an economic one possible. But nothing beats chips for the number of doublings or their speed.

© Roy Brander, P.Eng 2007