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 at the time.
The story of Steorn is a parable of Celtic Tiger Ireland.
It has been described by The Sunday Times (Ireland edition) as “a compelling and frequently bizarre read”; by The Irish Times as “an easy-to-read yarn that firmly places the ascent and crash of Steorn within the context of the Celtic Tiger era” and as having “brilliantly [set] the context in which Steorn was first active, a time when it suddenly didn’t seem strange to hear of taxi drivers buying apartments in Bulgaria”; and by broadcaster Pat Kenny as "an extraordinary story and a fascinating book”.