internal-combustion engine

[Drizzt]

Hope the name is spelled right...

HOWEVER, today is the 150th anniversary of the invention of the internal-combustion engine.
We had a little nice air-show here today to commemorate the event, in the city where the engine has beem invented.


It seems to me that nobody else in the rest of the world has noticed the event, too... O_o

[Brian Ellis]

Oh yes?

* 1680 - Dutch physicist, Christian Huygens designed (but never built) an internal combustion engine that was be fueled with gunpowder.
* 1807 - Francois Isaac de Rivaz of Switzerland invented an internal combustion engine that used a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. Rivaz designed a car for his engine - the first internal combustion powered automobile. However, this was a very unsuccessful vehicle.
* 1824 - English engineer, Samuel Brown adapted an old Newcomen steam engine to burn gas, and he used it to briefly power a vehicle up Shooter's Hill in London.
* 1858 - Belgian-born engineer, Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir invented and patented (1860) a double-acting, electric spark-ignition internal combustion engine fueled by coal gas. In 1863, Lenoir attached an improved engine (using petroleum and a primitive carburetor) to a three-wheeled wagon that managed to complete an historic fifty-mile road trip. (See image at top)
* 1862 - Alphonse Beau de Rochas, a French civil engineer, patented but did not build a four-stroke engine (French patent #52,593, January 16, 1862).
* 1864 - Austrian engineer, Siegfried Marcus*, built a one-cylinder engine with a crude carburetor, and attached his engine to a cart for a rocky 500-foot drive. It was the world's first gasoline-powered vehicle. Several year later, Marcus was able to design a vehicle that briefly ran at 10 mph that some historians consider was the forerunner of the modern automobile.
* 1873 - George Brayton, an American engineer, developed an unsuccessful two-stroke kerosene engine (it used two external pumping cylinders). However, it was considered the first safe and practical oil engine.
* 1866 - German engineers, Eugen Langen and Nikolaus August Otto improved on Lenoir's and de Rochas' designs and invented a more efficient gas engine.
* 1876 - Nikolaus August Otto invented and later patented a successful four-stroke engine, known as the “Otto cycle.”
* 1876 - The first successful two-stroke engine was invented by Sir Dougald Clerk.
* 1883 - French engineer, Edouard Delamare-Debouteville, built a single-cylinder four-stroke engine that ran on stove gas. It is not certain if he did indeed build a car, however, Delamare-Debouteville's designs were very advanced for the time - ahead of both Daimler and Benz in some ways at least on paper.
* 1885 - Gottlieb Daimler invented what is often recognized as the prototype of the modern gas engine - with a vertical cylinder, and with gasoline injected through a carburetor (patented in 1887). Daimler first built a two-wheeled vehicle the "Reitwagen" (Riding Carriage) with this engine and a year later built the world's first four-wheeled motor vehicle.
* 1886 - On January 29, Karl Benz received the first patent (DRP No. 37435) for a gas-fueled car.
* 1889 - Daimler built an improved four-stroke engine with mushroom-shaped valves and two V-slant cylinders.
* 1890 - Wilhelm Maybach built the first four-cylinder, four-stroke engine.

[GNEP]

Where's Carnot in that list?

[Brian Ellis]

He isn't. His work, as published in Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu et sur les machines propres à développer cette puissance (Reflection of the motive power of fire and machines to develop this power) was devoted to the study of steam as the means to generate mechanical motion. As such, they were external-, rather than internal-combustion engines.

[GNEP]

Wasn't there a bloke called "Diesel" as well? Or is that just the owner of a jeans company?

[Dr Mordrid]

Don't you mean Vin?

He's a movie "star"

Dr. Mordrid

[GNEP]

LOL

[Brian Ellis]

Yup! But he came a little later. His patent for a sparkless internal combustion engine was filed in 1898, although he ran a bench prototype in 1897. He thought up the idea of compression ignition in 1892.

How did Rudolf Diesel die? This is an unexplained mystery.

[az]

And where's Wankel?

AZ

[Dr Mordrid]

Yup....Wankel deserves at least honorable mention

Dr. Mordrid

[az]

The Mazda RX-8 is the only current car using a Wankel engine, the Renesis. Mazda is the one automaker that has shown the most support for this type of engine.

AZ

[Brian Ellis]

Actually, the German NSU factory made the first Wankel-engined production car, if my memory is still OK.

Isn't it ironic that the only IC engine that doesn't have a wanking motion to its pistons is the Wankel?

[GNEP]

LOL you've reminded me of all the old films that "pan to the fireplace" or rather a train going into a tunnel/steam pistons pumping on the engine. So much more romantic

I remember as an innocent little kid thinking "What has a train got to do with them kissing???"

[az]

Brian, you're right IIRC, but NSU went under, and Mazda are the only ones who still have faith in the Wankel - quite Ironic that none of the german automakers show any interest in this engine, which was developed here. But we have a history of letting japanese companies make money on german inventions - because we're too stupid/conservative to see the potential of a good invention...

AZ

[Gurm]

The rotary engine is one of the finest automotive inventions ever.

I HAVE SPOKEN.

- Gurm