Mechanical design, advanced materials and manufacturing
Made from C60 at 13 GPa and 900 °C, this carbon reaches a hardness of 33.7 ± 1.1 GPa, 12 % plastic strain in 2 µm micropillars and conductivity that varies by less than 12 % between 4 and 450 K. The combination is new, but it has only been demonstrated on millimeter-scale samples and has not undergone industrial qualification.
On 13 August 1856, Henry Bessemer presented to the British Association for the Advancement of Science a process that converts 5 tonnes of pig iron into steel in 20 minutes by blowing air through it — cutting the price of steel by a factor of 6 to 8, from ~£40-60 to £7 per tonne.
In 2004, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov isolated graphene — a 2D crystal of sp²-hybridised carbon one atom thick (0.335 nm) — by exfoliating graphite with Scotch tape. This material exhibits 130 GPa tensile strength (200× steel), an electron mobility of 200,000 cm²/V·s (100× silicon), and a thermal conductivity of 5,000 W/m·K (10× copper). Nobel Prize in Physics, 2010.
Selective Laser Melting (SLM) spreads layers of metal powder 20–50 μm thick and fuses them with a 200–1,000 W laser. SpaceX prints the SuperDraco combustion chamber as a single monolithic part.
In 1769, James Watt patents his steam engine with a separate condenser. By raising thermal efficiency from ~1% to ~5%, he triples the performance of Newcomen's engine — delivering the mechanical power that ignites the Industrial Revolution.
On February 23, 1893, Rudolf Diesel is granted patent DRP 67207 (filed in February 1892) for a compression-ignition engine achieving a thermal efficiency of 26.2% — more than double the Otto gasoline engine (10–14%), and the highest of any heat engine of its era.