page_title: Rotary engine
section_title: Adams-Farwell
hierarchical_section_title: Rotary engine / History / Adams-Farwell
caption_attribution_description: English: Designed and built by the Adams Company of Dubuque, Iowa, in 1907, this engine powered three, man-lifting experimental helicopters designed by Emile Berliner and flown in 1909 and 1910, and one designed by J. Newton Williams and flown in 1909. The engine was extremely light, and was ideal for vertical flight experiments collections.nasm.si.edu/code/emuseum.asp?profile=objects&amp;...
context_page_description: The rotary engine was an early type of internal combustion engine, usually designed with an odd number of cylinders per row in a radial configuration, in which the crankshaft remained stationary in operation, with the entire crankcase and its attached cylinders rotating around it as a unit. Its main application was in aviation, although it also saw use before its primary aviation role, in a few early motorcycles and automobiles.
  This type of engine was widely used as an alternative to conventional inline engines during World War I and the years immediately preceding that conflict. It has been described as "a very efficient solution to the problems of power output, weight, and reliability".
  By the early 1920s, the inherent limitations of this type of engine had rendered it obsolete.
context_section_description: The Adams-Farwell firm's automobiles, with the firm's first rolling prototypes using 3-cylinder rotary engines designed by Fay Oliver Farwell in 1898, led to production Adams-Farwell cars with first the 3-cylinder, then very shortly thereafter 5-cylinder rotary engines later in 1906, as another early American automaker utilizing rotary engines expressly manufactured for automotive use. Emil Berliner sponsored its development of the 5-cylinder Adams-Farwell rotary engine design concept as a lightweight power unit for his unsuccessful helicopter experiments. Adams-Farwell engines later powered fixed-wing aircraft in the US after 1910. It has also been asserted that the Gnôme design was derived from the Adams-Farwell, since an Adams-Farwell car is reported to have been demonstrated to the French Army in 1904. In contrast to the later Gnôme engines, and much like the later Clerget 9B and Bentley BR1 aviation rotaries, the Adams-Farwell rotaries had conventional exhaust and inlet valves mounted in the cylinder heads.
caption: An Adams-Farwell five cylinder rotary adapted for helicopter experimentation
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