The elliptical bearing saga is a long one. I mentioned the desmodromic cranks, well, elliptical bearings were Giuseppe's follow-up. The thinking was that with a synchronized set of elliptical bearings the effective crank length could be varied through out the powerstroke and thus could provide a way of adjusting the gear ratio, or at least that seems like what he was trying to get to. The trouble was that he wouldn't let this secret go until he was deep into the bottle. I tried different ways to pry it out of him which did not involve intoxication, but my spy just reported that he cried out "mamma" at the critical moment - a far cry from the free-body diagram I was expecting. She was rather expensive too, so I just kept pouring and hoping that our discussion of eggs, pears and other oblong objects (of which my spy possessed two excellent examples) would stimulate discussion. It rarely did. And he died before I had a complete understanding.