A Huge Diesel Engine.--One is apt to consider engineers as i~dividuals not particularly impressionable. However, nonmembers of this fraternity hardly could escape being awestruck by the appearance of the world's largest diesel engine. According to Science Service, this internal combustion prime mover has an overall length of almost 65 feet and a height of about 35 feet. Its eight cylinders are comparable in size with an automobile, each being nearly a yard in diameter with a piston travel of almost five feet. This crude oil burning engine is rated at 22,500 brakehorsepower and is to drive a 15,ooo kilowatt generator. Its builders claim that a large diesel-powered generator can be built more cheaply than a corresponding turbine and boiler plant and have put forward plans for the construction of a 30,00o kilowatt generator to be run by a 4o,ooo brake-horsepower diesel. Crude oil is injected into the cylinders of this new engine at pressures as great as 6,000 pounds per square inch. Its speed is 115 revolutions per minute while that of the proposed larger engine would be 187.
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