Building a steam engine is tough. Finding a dynamo simpler. But I don't want to be around a homemade boiler. There's a good chance that it's a bomb waiting to go off.

There's a simpler way. Instead of burning coal or wood to make steam in an external combustion engine, the smart thing to do is to convert the fuel to gas and send it into a commercial internal combustion engine driving an alternator. The system might be nothing more than a 5 hp Briggs & Stratton engine and a truck alternator charging 12 volt batteries. No boiler to build. No engine to build. No gasoline to buy. Just build a simple cooker and fire it up.

This is was done in 1905 when Mathot showed people how to use those new "high-tech" one lung engines, powering them with gas generated by cooking wood and coal.

Chapters include selection of an engine, installation, foundation and exhaust, water circulation, lubrication, perfect operation, how to start the engine, perturbations in the operation, producer gas engine, producer gas, pressure gas-producers, suction gas-producers, oil and volatile hydrocarbon engines, and selection of an engine.

The beauty of this book is in details provided for many different gas generators. You get drawings of a Simplex generator, a Dowson unit, a Fichet-Heurtey producer with rotating bed-plate, a Gardie unit, a sawdust purifier, a gas holder and washer, a Fange-Chavanon inverted-combustion producer and many, many more. You'll find more about gas production here than in a dozen other books.

This is not only valuable material to the homesteader and survivalist, but especially to the guy who wants to run his auto on coal and wood. Scaled down versions of these digesters were used all over the world during WWII and the years following due to petroleum shortages. And antique engine fans will find interesting details on early engines, ignitions systems, and more. No promises, but it may be that details here could help you run an engine on methane generated by rotting manure and organic material in a digester.

Great, raw, rare energy information from a simpler time begging to be adapted to today's world. We've been consuming oil faster than we've been finding it for many years now. Shortages are on the way. This might be a way around the problem. Interesting stuff.