Whatever happened to the "Free piston engine?"

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With your help we like to start a new series. About inventions, designs and firsts in industry. And then preferably those examples  from which you never heard again. A fine example is the free piston engine as pictured above (click main picture) and published in a 1956 issue of The Illustrated London News. In fact it's a hybrid concept combining a horizontal flat twin without crank (!!!).  The opposed pistons (firing like a diesel engine) are used to compress air to drive a gasturbine. Possibly we're very ignorant but we never heard about this system before. And have no idea what became of it.

However....we always thought that copying by now was far beyond what Toyota does. Yet it seems at least they were inspired by London News. This is an idea they came up with not too long ago and published by Road & Track . They write: "Brilliant.... The simple solution is to strap a generator to a piston engine."  Yes we know, it is not the same as the 1956 idea, but still it's fun to see that similar ideas keep popping up. And that kind of things we like to hear from you. 

( Horwitz collection)

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