[SEL] RE: One Flywheel or Two?

[Rob Skinner]

> My last exhibit your honour, is a genuine original 1905 Richard
> Hornsby sales leaflet for the Hornsby Oil Engine, showing twin
> flywheels, on two sizes of engines.

Hi Peter,
Despite most of the surviving engines having one flywheel, the catalogs verify
that the engines originally left the factory with two flywheels.  This is not as
strange as you might think.

During the war there were severe shortages of raw materials.  Scrap drives
consumed many old, worn out engines.  But the Hornsby engines were of such good
design that they were still running strong and powering industry during the war.
It would have been foolhardy to scrap the engines that were running the shops
and factories!  However, it was soon discovered that the engines were so well
designed that they would perform just fine with a single flywheel.  The
superfluous flywheels were then removed and melted down into munitions.  

The only two-flywheel engines that you'll see today are those that were owned by
Nazi sympathizers.  

Now you know the WHOLE story
;-)