The Impossible Dream: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Steorn, the Celtic Tiger's Most Audacious Start-Up

By Barry J Whyte and Barry J. Whyte

In 2006, a previously unknown Irish technology company by the name of Steorn created headlines globally when it took out a full-page ad in The Economist, in which it claimed to have made the scientific breakthrough of this - or any other - century: perpetual motion, nothing less than a complete and immediate solution to the global energy crisis.

The investment money poured in, with some of Ireland's most respected entrepreneurs and institutions getting on board, but the demonstration was a spectacular failure. So how did so many well-meaning and otherwise sensible people get things so desperately, absurdly wrong? The story begins with a malfunctioning CCTV system and ends with an exploding battery, and it drives home Ireland's frenzied state of mind during the Celtic Tiger years.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0717188043
• ISBN13: 9780717188048
• Release Date: July 2020
• Publisher: Gill Books
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.1"