Car Engines

A car was not invented by a single person in just one day. The history of the car shows the progression that has taken place all over the world. Around 100,000 patents produced the modern car. The people who first drew up the theoretical plans for a car were Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton.

The first ever self-propelled road vehicle which was a military tractor was invented by a French engineer & mechanic named Nicolas Joseph Cugnot in 1769. He used a steam engine to control his vehicle which was built with his instructions by a mechanic called Brezin at the Paris Arsenal. This type of engine was used to pull artillery at a great speed of 2 1/2 mph on just three wheels by the French Army. The vehicles had to stop every 10 to 15 minutes in order to build up their steam power. The engine and boiler were unconnected from the remainder of the vehicle and were put in the front.

A Steam engine powered a car by actually burning the fuel that heated the water in the boiler. This made steam which expanded and pushed the pistons which turned the crankshaft, and then which turned the wheels. The problem with the Steam engines was that they added too much weight to a car so they proved to be a very poor design for all road vehicles.

In the year 1771, Nicolas Cugnot drove one of his cars into a stone wall, which meant that Cugnot was the first ever person to have a motor vehicle accident. Unfortunately, this was the just the start of bad luck for him. After one of his patrons passed away and the other one was exiled, the funds for his road vehicle experiments stopped.

Another form of engine is an internal combustion engine. This is an engine that uses the explosive combustion of the vehicles fuel in order to push the piston inside a cylinder. This piston's movement will turn a crankshaft which will then move the cars’ wheels using a chain or the drive shaft.

The internal combustion engine was designed (although never built) by a Dutch physicist called Christian Huygens in the year 1680. He suggested the use of gunpowder to fuel the engine.

In 1807 a man called Francois Isaac de Rivaz from Switzerland created an internal combustion engine which used a combination of hydrogen and oxygen to fuel it.

An English engineer by the name of Samuel Brown modified an old Newcomen steam engine so that it could burn gas in 1824. He used this to shortly power a vehicle up the Shooter's Hill in London.

In the year 1858 a Belgian engineer called Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir created and patented a double-acting internal combustion engine which used an electric spark-ignition which was fuelled by coal gas. In 1863, he added an improved engine (which used petrol and a primal carburettor) onto a three-wheeled wagon which actually managed to finish a fifty-mile road trip.

In 1866 two German engineers called Eugen Langen and Nikolaus August Otto actually improved on the inventors Lenoir's and de Rochas' designs and made a more competent gas engine.

Nikolaus August Otto also created and later patented a great four-stroke engine, called the "Otto cycle" in 1876. Also in this year the first ever successful two-stroke engine had been invented by Sir Dougald Clerk.

A French engineer by the name of Edouard Delamare-Debouteville, created a single-cylinder, four stroke engine which ran on stove gas in 1883.

In the year 1885 Gottlieb Daimler invented an engine which is generally recognised as a prototype for the modern gas engine using a vertical cylinder as well as having petrol put through the carburettor (patented in 1887). He first built the two-wheeled vehicle called the "Reitwagen" (Riding Carriage) using this engine. The next year he actually built the first ever four-wheeled motor vehicle.

On January 29 1886, Karl Benz received the first ever patent (DRP No. 37435) for a gas-fuelled vehicle.

In 1889 Daimler made a better four-stroke engine which had mushroom-shaped valves as well as two V-slant cylinders and then in the following year a man called Wilhelm Maybach made the first ever four-cylinder, four-stroke engine.