Étienne Lenoir built a double-acting, spark-ignition engine that ran on coal gas and became the first truly effective internal combustion engine. Its reliable operation led to several commercial applications, and it demonstrated the potential of the internal combustion engine, spawning all the improvements made by later inventors.
Although often seen as the steam engine’s
During the eighteenth century, other inventors suggested using coal gas, wood gas, or other volatile hydrocarbons as fuel, but practicable engines emerged only when inventors substituted the expansive force of steam in place of burning gunpowder. Nevertheless, the dream of an internal combustion engine did not die, and throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, inventors continued to design and experiment with devices in which fuel was burned within an engine (in contrast to steam engines, whose fuel was burned in a separate boiler).
In Switzerland during the first decade of the nineteenth century, François Isaac de Rivaz
The person who elevated the internal combustion engine from the provisional to the practical was Étienne Lenoir. Although largely self-taught, he had become a successful inventor by the time he focused on engines. For example, in the 1840’s he developed a method of enameling clock faces, and in 1855 he invented an electric brake for railroad trains. During the late 1850’s, he turned his attention to devices that burned fuel inside a cylinder containing a piston. He believed that, if explosive
Lenoir’s basic idea was to modify a steam engine by replacing steam with illuminating gas. His engine contained a horizontal cylinder with a piston. The piston had a connecting rod linking it to a crankshaft with a flywheel. Lenoir’s engines were double-acting through a two-stroke cycle. When the piston was halfway in the cylinder, a slide valve admitted a mixture of gas and air and then closed. A spark provided by a storage battery
Lenoir patented his engine in 1860. He licensed several Paris workshops to build his engines. For some applications, they were better than steam engines, and they had the advantage of starting more quickly and being more adaptable to modest tasks. Depending on the work they had to perform, Lenoir made his engines in sizes from one-half to six horsepower, with three-horsepower engines being the most common.
Purchasers of the Lenoir engines used them for such jobs as pumping water out of mines and running printing presses. During the 1860’s, more than five hundred were in use in France, Great Britain, and other European countries. Lenoir himself tried to expand the market for his engines by experimenting with their application to transportation. For example, he used one of his two-horsepower engines to power a boat, and he also installed his engine in various land vehicles. In 1862, his “hydrocarbon carriage”—now thought of as the first automobile
With widespread use of Lenoir engines came an equally widespread recognition of their many deficiencies. The engines were extremely inefficient, with efficiencies varying between 3 percent and 5 percent. This problem had several causes: The air-gas mixture in the engines was not compressed, resulting in diminished power. Under heavy loads, the engines ran roughly and noisily, mainly as a result of the midstroke ignition, when the piston was moving most rapidly. Furthermore, the Lenoir engine was wasteful in its use of illuminating gas. Maintenance costs were also high. The engine had to be frequently lubricated, its batteries
All of these factors meant that the operating costs of Lenoir’s engines were much higher than those of steam engines with comparable power. Despite these problems, and in some ways because of them, the Lenoir engine became the jumping-off point for further developments. Indeed, some scholars state that Lenoir’s greatest achievement was not his internal combustion engine but the stimulus it provided to his successors, who transformed his engine into the vastly improved machine that profoundly influenced many twentieth century industries.
Although he was unable to profit financially from its evolution, Lenoir, who lived until 1900, was able to witness the internal combustion engine’s improvements and successes in the hands of others. The first progress occurred when a better cooling system reduced gas consumption and lowered the temperature of exhaust gases, both of which heightened efficiency. Greater efficiency gains came from the recognition that compression of the gas-air mixture would maximize the power gained from the fuel. Engineers and scientists studied the performance and thermodynamics of the Lenoir engine. One of them, Alphonse Beau de Rochas
Nikolaus August Otto
Daimler used his engine to propel the world’s first four-wheeled motor vehicles in 1886, and Carl Benz
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Cummins, C. Lyle. Internal Fire. Warrendale, Pa.: Society of Automotive Engineers, 1989. This well-illustrated history of the internal combustion engine has a good bibliography and index. -
Daniels, Jeff. Driving Force: The Evolution of the Car Engine. Newbury Park, Calif.: Haynes, 2002. This general history of the internal combustion engine includes illustrations and indexes. -
Eckermann, Erik. World History of the Automobile. Warrendale, Pa.: Society of Automotive Engineers, 2001. This updated English translation of a work originally published in German in 1989 contains many photographs and diagrams, along with a glossary, bibliography, and five helpful indexes. -
Stone, Richard. Introduction to Internal Combustion Engines. 3d ed. Warrendale, Pa.: Society of Automotive Engineers, 1989. This textbook provides students and engineers with the background necessary to understand the history, science, and technology of the internal combustion engine. It also contains exercises, references, and an index.
Trevithick Patents the High-Pressure Steam Engine
First U.S. Petroleum Refinery Is Built
Commercial Oil Drilling Begins
Otto Invents a Practical Internal Combustion Engine
Benz Patents the First Practical Automobile
Dunlop Patents the Pneumatic Tire
Diesel Patents the Diesel Engine
Carl Benz; Gottlieb Daimler; Étienne Lenoir; Nikolaus August Otto.