Chilling Effect

摘要

BACK IN 2001, A MIDDLE-AGED HAN made a video of his car and sent it around to a few friends. So far, so predictable— but this video featured a dilapidated Vaux-hall Nova whizzing around a junk-strewn yard in a cloud of fog. At the wheel was Peter Dearman, a rumpled-looking auto-dldact who had spent the better part of four decades imagining a way to build engineering's ultimate vaporware: a motor powered only by air. Born in 1951 on an egg farm north of London, Dearman would seem an unlikely candidate to have solved the problem. He left school at age 15 and worked in the family business for a while, then took a job at a local sheet-metal factory. He spent his evenings as many Englishmen do—out in the garage or the garden shed, tinkering. But Dearman's aptitude and ambition set him apart from other hobbyists. Over the years he filed patents for an improved adjustable wrench, a solar hot-water system, and a portable resuscitator that is still used in ambulances today. His most impressive achievement, however, was the Nova, whose engine he cobbled together from string, a used beer keg, a red plastic trash bin, and a coffee can's worth of liquid nitrogen.