Gas powered lamps and steam powered ice cream makers - The ingenious solutions the Amish use to bring modern technology into their lives

By James Nye
PUBLISHED: 15:08 EST, 16 July 2013 | UPDATED: 11:10 EST, 17 July 2013
In parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania where horse-drawn buggies clip-clop at the pace of a bygone era, Amish communities continue to find ingenious ways to hang onto the coat-tails of the 21st century without compromising their values.
Famed the world over for their rejection of modern technology, a new book demonstrates how the Amish find inventive ways and loopholes to accommodate advances such as electricity and even the Internet into their strict guidelines and codes.
About 45 percent of the nation’s Amish population is concentrated in Ohio and Pennsylvania; each state has 63,000, while the nation has 280,000 and a new book, 'The Amish' by Donald B. Kraybill shows how families continue to negotiate acceptable boundaries for each church community.

Necessity: The Amish are very inventive. This man built a miniature steam engine to power a 10 gallon ice cream freezer in use here at an Amish auction

'Amish are all about the loopholes,' says Chris Weber, who works with Amish youth to Buzzfeed. 'The best way to create an exception is to have it be dependent on business.'
Obviously, cars in general are banned, but there are exceptions made for certain designated drivers to use vehicles for emergency or business needs.

And while there are no phones allowed in homes, some communities across Ohio and Pennsylvania have created 'phone shanties' - some even allow cellphones, as long as they are not iPhone style smart phones that are connected to the Internet.

However, for some businesses, church leaders allow non-Amish-staff-members to bring in their laptops so that the web can be surfed by-proxy.
Indeed, connectivity is at the heart of what separates the Amish from the rest of the nation.

Invention: An Amish machine shop specializes in building large barbecue grills on trailers. Many of grills are sold to outside non-Amish people. Shattering a myth about Amish gender roles, these men barbecue chicken for an Amish Festival

It is the reason why Amish do not allow electricity in their homes, because in essence that literally makes them part of the 'grid' through the wires needed for power.
To get around this, Amish create what the authors of the new history label, 'Amish electricity'.

Loopholes: This lamp is powered by gas and allows an Amish family to light their home without using electricity

This is a combination of generators, batteries, solar panels and hydraulic pressure pumps that they use to power water mains and run appliances such as lights, lamps and even rudimentary Internet disabled computers.
Another method utilized by the Amish is to remove electric motors from power drills and to replace them with gas-powered pneumatic motors or compressors.
Those who are familiar with the Amish, say that despite the adaptations of technology, the Amish proceed extremely cautiously.
'It's quite clear that Amish groups that monitor technology in a discerning way -- with an eye to its effects on the community in the long run -- do last longer and have more cohesion in their community,' said Eric Brende who left his doctorate at MIT to live with the Amish for a year in 2011.
'The group I was with had almost zero attrition in their members. They were very watchful of technology. There are Amish groups that adopted the automobile early on and those groups either disappeared all together or became small and attenuated, because the automobile is very destructive to community relations that are based on face-to-face contact.'
This caution is evident from the introduction of telephone lines into Lancaster County - probably the most famous of all Amish communities.

Tradition: The Amish people are known for their simple way of living, and reluctance to adopt many conveniences of modern technology

Gas: This iron used by an Amish family runs on propane and is another inventive way to avoid electricity

'Interestingly enough, when the question of phone use first came up in Lancaster County it was after they had adopted the phone,' said Brende to CNN. 
'And it was at a time when party lines still existed. So people could eavesdrop on other each other's conversations. They soon discovered there was a lot of gossiping going on and the phone magnified powers of gossip and the potential to hurt people's feelings who were being talked about behind their back. ... So they put an end to it.'

Some Amish farmers use solar panels to electrify their cattle fences because they don't tap electricity from the public grid

Let There Be Light: These gas powered lamps allow nights to be illuminated in Amish households where this allowed by the community leaders

Controversial: The Amish computer does not allow any connection to the Internet

One community, the Beachy Amish, adopted cars and within a generation they had disbanded because the car allowed them disperse to other parts of the country.
One controversial advancement available to the Amish is a computer designed specifically for these technology-shunning people.
Called the 'Classic Word Processor', it advertises it is 'made specifically for the plain people by the plain people'.

The Amish by Donald Kraybill is available now in book stores and chronicles the history of the Amish and their transition into the 21st century

The computer allows the Amish to create spreadsheets and receipts but is not connected in any way to the Internet.
The Amish, who trace their roots to the Protestant Reformation, restrict interactions with the modern world and technology. They dress plainly, don’t hold political office and are conscientious objectors during wars.
They fiercely protect their identity, sometimes to the point of what might be labeled ignorance.
'One time I was in the middle of talking to someone and I dropped the name Beethoven -- the famous musical composer Beethoven. And nobody in the group had ever heard of Beethoven,' said Brende.