Smallest Rider Hot Air Engine

The Rider Compression (hot air) Engine, invented by Alexander K. Rider, was known for its durability, pumping capacity, and simplicity of design. It was one of the few early hot air engines which used a regenerator or "economizer".

Rider's engine has been referred to as the "only single major innovation [in stirling engine design] right up to the middle of the present [20th] century" since Robert Stirling's original designs of the early 19th century (Finkelstein and Organ, AIR ENGINES, Professional Engineering Publishing Ltd. London. 2001.)

This is one of the few surviving examples of the smallest 4-inch size Rider and was purchased in the early 1880s by Thomas Richardson, lawyer for E. Remington & Sons (later to become Remington Arms), for his new home in Ilion, New York. The home was the first in Herkimer County to have an indoor bathroom with running water.