In researching rotary valves I stumbled across the work of this remarkable man. He built racing cars powered not only by rotary valve engines, but a Lycoming aircraft engine, and designing and building a new 7 cylinder rotary aircraft engine, among other fascinating racing and engineering feats.
All of this was performed on a modified 1938 lathe with overhead drive shaft for the lathe and a milling head. The lathe was 12" x 36". The work it performed was machining from solid full size racing and aviation crankcases from the solid, among other things.
Once I started reading on this site about this man, I couldn't stop. See if you don't feel the same way:
http://ralphwatson.scienceontheweb.net/index.html#contents
