Twentieth century

Twentieth century

• 1909, the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes develops the concept of enthalpy for the measure of the "useful" work that can be obtained from a closed thermodynamic system at a constant pressure.
• 1913 - Nikola Tesla patents the Tesla turbine based on the Boundary layer effect.
• 1926 - Robert Goddard of the USA launches the first liquid fuel rocket.
• 1929 - Felix Wankel patents the Wankel rotary engine (U.S. Patent 2,988,008)
• 1933 - French physicist Georges J. Ranque invents the Vortex tube , a fluid flow device without moving parts, that can separate a compressed gas into hot and cold streams.
• 1937 - Hans von Ohain builds a gas turbine
• 1940 - Hungarian Bela Karlovitz working for the Westinghouse company in the USA files the first patent for a magnetohydrodynamic generator, which can generate electricity directly from a hot moving gas
• 1942 - R.S. Gaugler of General Motors patents the idea of the Heat pipe, a heat transfer mechanism that combines the principles of both thermal conductivity and phase transition to efficiently manage the transfer of heat between two solid interfaces.
• 1950s - The Philips company develop the Stirling-cycle Stirling Cryocooler which converts mechanical energy to a temperature difference.
• 1962 - William J. Buehler and Frederick Wang discover the Nickel titanium alloy known as Nitinol which has a shape memory dependent on its temperature.
• 1992 - The first practical magnetohydrodynamic generators are built in Serbia and the USA.