page_title: History of the internal combustion engine
section_title: 1860–1920
hierarchical_section_title: History of the internal combustion engine / 1860–1920
caption_attribution_description: Fig. 205 Two-stroke twin-cylinder engine with separate pumping cylinders. A twin cylinder two-stroke engine, using another pair of cylinders (four in all) to provide compression. The more common modern method is to use the crankcase for the same purpose. Although described in the original caption as a "vee twin", this is more like a parallel twin. The "vee" aspect is how the pumping cylinders form the vee. Also note the use of a master-slave connecting rod to drive the pumping cylinders. Scans from 'The Book of the Motor Car', Rankin Kennedy C.E., 1912 See other images from this source in Scans from 'The Book of the Motor Car'
context_page_description: Various scientists and engineers contributed to the development of internal combustion engines. In 1791, John Barber developed a turbine. In 1794 Thomas Mead patented a gas engine. Also in 1794 Robert Street patented an internal-combustion engine, which was also the first to use the liquid fuel and built an engine around that time. In 1798, John Stevens designed the first American internal combustion engine. In 1807, French engineers Nicéphore and Claude Niépce ran a prototype internal combustion engine, using controlled dust explosions, the Pyréolophore. This engine powered a boat on the Saône river, France. The same year, the Swiss engineer François Isaac de Rivaz built and patented a hydrogen and oxygen powered internal-combustion engine. The fuel was stored in a balloon and the spark was electrically ignited by a hand-operated trigger. Fitted to a crude four-wheeled wagon, François Isaac de Rivaz first drove it 100 meters in 1813, thus making history as the first car-like vehicle known to have been powered by an internal-combustion engine.
context_section_description: 1860: Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir invented a gas-fired internal combustion engine, and applied for a patent titled Moteur à air dilatá par combustion des gaz. His engine is similar in appearance to a horizontal double-acting steam engine, with cylinders, pistons, connecting rods, and flywheel in which the gas essentially took the place of the steam. Allegedly, several of these engines were built and used commercially in Paris. Friedrich Sass considers the Lenoir engine to be the first functional internal combustion engine.
  1861: Nicolaus Otto ordered Michael Joseph Zons to build a copy of the Lenoir engine for experimental purposes. Later that year, Zons built a second engine for Otto, a four-cylinder, two-stroke unit.
  1861: Alphonse Beau de Rochas invented the four-stroke operating principle. He published an essay titled Nouvelles recherches sur les conditions pratiques de l'utilisation de la chaleur et en général de la force motrice. Avec application au chemin de fer et à la navigation, and applied for a patent. The patent was granted in France, however, it consists of text only, but does not include any drawings of a four-stroke engine. The patent was eventually declared invalid after two years; no copy has been kept in the French patent office's archive.
  1863: Otto designed an atmospheric gas engine, that was once again built by Zons. Otto tried filing a patent application, but the patent was not granted in Prussia.
  1864: In Vienna, Siegfried Marcus put an atmospheric petrol engine on a handcart. Allegedly, it drove 200 metres.
  1864: Eugen Langen joined Otto, and improved the atmospheric gas engine.
  1865: Pierre Hugon started production of the Hugon engine, similar to the Lenoir engine, but with better economy, and more reliable flame ignition.
  1867: Otto and Langen exhibited their free piston engine at the Paris Exhibition in 1867, and they won the greatest award. It had less than half the gas consumption of the Lenoir or Hugon engines.
  1868: Eugen Langen and Nicolaus Otto obtained a patent on the atmospheric gas engine.
  1872: In America, George Brayton applied for a patent on Brayton's Ready Motor. It used constant pressure combustion, and was the first commercial liquid fuelled internal combustion engine. In 1876, it was put into production.
  1875: Nicolaus Otto, working with Franz Rings, designed the first functional compressed charge, four-stroke engine. In early 1876, it was tested. The engine was a single-cylinder unit, which displaced 6.1 dm³, and which was rated 3 PS (2,206 W) at 180/min, with a fuel consumption of 0.95 m³/PSh (1.29 m³/kWh). In 1876, Wilhelm Maybach improved the engine by changing the connecting rod and piston design from trunk to crosshead, (now giving the engine a 400 mm stroke, increasing the displacement to 8.143 dm³), so it could be put into series production.
  1876: Otto applied for a patent on a stratified charge engine, that would use the four-stroke principle. The patent was granted in 1876 in Elsass-Lothringen, and transformed into a German Realm Patent in 1877 (DRP 532, 4 August 1877).
  1878: Dugald Clerk designed the first two-stroke engine with in-cylinder compression.  He patented it in England in 1881.
  1879: Karl Benz, working independently, was granted a patent for his reliable two-stroke, internal combustion engine, gas engine.
  1882: James Atkinson invented the Atkinson cycle engine. Atkinson's engine had one power phase per revolution together with different intake and expansion volumes, potentially making it more efficient than the Otto cycle, but certainly avoiding Otto's patent.
  1884: British engineer Edward Butler constructed the first petrol (gasoline) internal combustion engine. Butler invented the spark plug, ignition magneto, coil ignition and spray jet carburetor, and was the first to use the word petrol.
  1885: German engineer Gottlieb Daimler received a German patent for a supercharger 
  1885/1886 Karl Benz designed and built his own four-stroke engine that was used in his automobile, which was developed in 1885, patented in 1886, and became the first automobile in ser
caption: Sir Dugald Clerk's two cycle engine from 1879
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