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Vibrations have always been a serious drawback of the reciprocating compressor. In their early history reciprocating compressors were operated at slow speeds, were consequently large and required even larger foundations. Gradually speeds were increased in many cases by as much as an order of magnitude with substantial reductions in size and weight of the compressor itself. However, since vibrations do vary with the square of the speed, foundation requirements remained severe. This paper presents a design that for the first time in a practical way completely balances all free inertia forces - the cause of the vibrations -of the reciprocating compressor. The reciprocating machine can now not only effectively compete with the modern rotary compressor but in many instances open entirely new possibilities for compressors and for their installations.