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Steorn

Irish energy company

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ2717232
Source-derived summary

Steorn Ltd () was a small, private technology development company based in Dublin, Ireland. In August 2006, it announced that it had developed a technology to provide "free, clean, and constant energy" via an apparent perpetual motion machine, something which is contrary to the law of conservation of energy, a fundamental principle of physics.

Steorn challenged the scientific community to investigate its claim and, in December 2006, said that it had chosen a jury of scientists to do so. In June 2009 the jury gave its unanimous verdict that Steorn had not demonstrated the production of energy.

Steorn gave two public demonstrations of its technology. In the first demonstration, in July 2007 at the Kinetica Museum in London, the device failed to work. The second demonstration, which ran from December 2009 to February 2010 at the Waterways Visitor Centre in Dublin, involved a motor powered by a battery and provided no independent evidence that excess energy was being generated. It was dismissed by the press as an attempt to build a perpetual motion machine, and a publicity stunt.

In November 2016, the company laid off its staff, closed its facility, and prepared for liquidation. It was finally liquidated in May 2024.

Editorial summary

“Steorn” enters the record as irish energy company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Steorn, Irish and energy can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2006, 2009, 2007, 2010—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Steorn, Irish and energy.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Steorn” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Steorn, Irish and energy provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2717232. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2009, 2007 and 2010.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Steorn”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Steorn primary sources, Steorn archive and Steorn research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Steorn”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Steorn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.