The Birth of the Internal Combustion Engine

It is possible to find the first idea of such an engine in the studies of Christian Huygens who, in 1678 described — although as a purely theoretical exercise — the first internal combustion engine in history. In essence, this consisted of a piston moving in a cylinder, at one e of which was introduced a small quantity of gunpowder which, when exploded, caused the movement of the piston.

A similar idea was designed, and actually built, more than a century later by a Swiss, De Rivaz, who succeeded in constructing a sort of rudimentary vehicle which utilised the energy of explosive gases. In this case ignition was by means of a Volta's gun that is to say somewhat similarly to the present method.

Almost contemporaneously with De Rivaz, another scholar, name Robert Street, experimented in England using inflammable gas if cylinder, while in France an engineer called Lebon made the fir experiments with the ignition of explosive mixtures by means of an electric spark.

Another enthusiastic experimenter in the early years of the If century was an American, Peter Cooper, whose efforts to create internal combustion engine, which would be adequately efficient fn the point of view of power developed, were dramatically interrupted by an explosion which blinded him.

A further step forward was taken in 1825, when Michael Faraday, the author of notable studies in very diverse fields of science, discoveed benzene in coal tar. This was the first liquid fuel capable of being utilized with success in internal combustion engines and its possibilities we| quickly explored by the inventors.

Then in 1856, two Italians, Eugenic Barsanti and Felice Matteucci, built the first practical internal combustion engine. This utilised the explosion of a mixture of air and gas in two cylinders and worked on a three-stroke cycle, without compression. The reduction of this mixture, created in an ingenious carburettor, was by means of a positive actuated inlet valve, as was that for exhaust. Ignition was by means of an electric spark or momentary contact with a flame. The cylinders were water-cooled. To the prototype of 1856 they added a second engine, built in 1858 in the Benini workshops in Florence. Two years later they formed a company, Barsanti and Matteucci, which commissioned the construction of a third motor in the Zurich factory.

The success obtained by them in the first national exhibition in I was spoiled by public recognition in France of Lenoir as inventor the first gas engine. The Italians protests were disregarded outside Italy.

Thus it is that the gas engine produced by another inventor, Etienne Lenoir of Luxembourg, went down in history as the first example of its kind, even though it was built in 1860, four years later than the Italian engine.

There was little actual difference between the two engines; both used the explosion of a mixture of gas and air inside a cylinder without previously compressing it. Lenoir's engine used a different method of transmitting piston motion to the crankshaft and the mixture, which was introduced by means of slide valve gear, was electrically ignited by Ruhmkorff coil. There has been much discussion about the relative efficiency of these two motors, certainly the French one had much I commercial success.

It was mainly used for the mechanisation of machine tools in workshops. But it would appear that, in 1862 or 1863, such an engine was installed in a wheeled vehicle — at least according to the memoirs Sir himself — who stated that the vehicle, equipped with a sparkling plug and an embryonic distributor, had performed the journey a number of times between Paris and Jonville-le-Pont, a distance of over11 miles. The complete absence from the press reports of the time of any reference to the public appearance of such an unusual vehicle must however, give rise to some doubt. In any case, it is certain that in around 1860 are of crucial importance in the story of the motor car. The internal combustion engine was born.

The year 1860 is a very important one in the history of the motor car; In that year the French civil engineer, Alphonse Beau de Rochas, described the four-stroke combustion cycle, the principle on which almost all future internal combustion engines would function. As we have seen, Lenoir's engine exploited the kinetic effects of the mixture's explosion in a three stroke cycle: induction, explosion, expansion. Beau de Rochas added the fourth phase, that of compression, which held the key to the development of the power of the internal combustion engine.