|
There is an important difference between a steam engine and an internal combustion engine of the kind used in cars and trucks. In a steam engine, the fuel is burned in a separate boiler to make steam, which in turn provides the force to make the engine work. In an internal combustion engine, the fuel is burned inside the engine itself. This makes the internal combustion engine a lighter, more compact and more easily controllable machine than the steam engine.
The gunpowder engine
The story of the internal combustion engine begins over 300 years ago with a Dutch scientist called Christiaan Huygens (1629-95). About 1680, he built an engine which used gunpowder as fuel.
The explosion of the gunpowder raised a piston inside a cylinder, which fell again as the hot gases from the explosion cooled. Today, it sounds rather strange and highly dangerous to run an engine on gunpowder, but Huygens had the right idea. All internal combustion engines are driven by explosions. A modern car engine works because of the explosions of a mixture of fuel and air which take place all the time the engine is running.
The idea of internal combustion was forgotten in the excitement over steam, and it was not until the 1840s that a French inventor, Etienne Lenoir (1822-1900), returned to it. His engine ran on coal gas. It worked well, but it used so much gas that it was not a serious rival to the steam engine.
Otto's engine
As with many important inventions, no one person can be described as the inventor of the modern internal combustion engine. Many scientists and inventors tried out different ideas in the middle of the nineteenth century. But in 1876, a German engineer, Nikolaus Otto (1832-91), built the first successful internal combustion engine. His engine was fuelled by coal gas, but was not intended for transport. The aim was to find something more compact and convenient than the steam engine to power pumps and factory machines.
The oil industry in those days was very small. Oil was used only for lighting and cooking, and as a lubricant. Some engineers began to experiment with oil as a fuel for engines. Their work developed along two distinct lines, and led to the two main types of internal combustion engines that we have today: the diesel engine and the petrol engine. The petrol engine was the first to be fitted to a car.
One of Otto\'s assistants was Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900). Daimler left to set up his own business, and, in the mid-1880s, he began to experiment with petrol as a fuel. This was mixed with air and drawn into the engine at exactly the right moment when it would explode and drive the piston.
On his third attempt to build his engine, Daimler was satisfied with its performance and fitted it to a bicycle. In 1886, he tried this out on the roads. The next year, he took a four-wheeled carriage, removed the shafts used to attach a horse to it and fitted his engine. This was the first \'horseless carriage\'.
In the same year, another German engineer, Karl Benz (1844-1929), fitted a similar engine to a tricycle. He went on to build four-wheeled vehicles.
Daimler\'s and Benz\'s cars were the first to go into production for sale to other people. Benz built his own cars, but Daimler sold his engines to a French company, Panhard and Levassor, which built bodies for them. These were the first car bodies that did not copy the design of horse-drawn carriages. The 1894 model had many modern features such as a metal chassis, a bonnet over the engine, and clutch, brake and accelerator pedals.
The first cars were expensive, and were regarded more as toys for rich people than as a serious means of transport. Owners also had to be prepared to have a sense of adventure and an understanding of engines, because breakdowns happened frequently.
As engines became more reliable, more people wanted cars, and as more cars were made, the price of them went down. By the 1920s, motoring was beginning to become an everyday experience for millions of people.
|
