The three types of rotary engines here shown are similar in principle, and none of them is of great practical value, though the upper figure shows an engine that has met with a certain measure of commercial success.] It is not necessary to describe other of the rotary engines that have been made along more or less similar lines by numerous inventors, models of which are for the most part, as in the case of those just described, to be seen more commonly in museums than in practical workshops. Reference may be made, however, to a rotary engine which was invented by a Mr. Hoffman, of Buffalo, New York, about the beginning of the twentieth century, an example of which was put into actual operation in running the machinery of a shop in Buffalo, in 1905. This engine consists of a solid elliptical shaft of steel, fastened to an axle at one side of its centre, which axis is also the shaft of the cylinder, which revolves about the central ellipse in such a way that at one part of the revolution the cylinder surface fits tightly against the ellipse, while the opposite side of the cylinder supplies a free chamber between the ellipse and the cylinder walls. Running the length of the cylinder are two curved pieces of steel, like longitudinal sections of a tube. These flanges are adjusted at opposite sides of the cylinder and so arranged that their sides at all times press against the ellipse, alternately retreating into the substance of the cylinder, and coming out into the free chamber. Steam is admitted to the free chamber through one end of the shaft of ellipse and cylinder and exhausted through the other end. The pressure of the steam against first one end and then the other of the flanges supplies the motive power. This pressure acts always in one direction, and the entire apparatus revolves, the cylinder, however, revolving more rapidly than the central ellipse. For this engine the extravagant claim is made that there is no limit to its speed of revolution, within the limit of resistance of steel to centrifugal force. It has been estimated that a locomotive might be made to run two hundred or three hundred miles an hour without difficulty, with the Hoffman engine. Such estimates, however, are theoretical, and it remains to be seen what the engine can do in practise when applied to a variety of tasks, and what are its limitations. Certainly the apparatus is at once ingenious and simple in principle, and there is no obvious theoretical reason why it should not have an important future. TURBINE ENGINES