Internal Combustion Engines

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because of the small standby losses with these engines
during the shutdown period.

History

The first experimental internal combustion engine was made by a Dutch
astronomer, Christian Huygens, who, in 1680, applied a principle advanced by
Jean de Hautefeuille in 1678 for drawing water. This principle was based on the
fact that the explosion of a small amount of gunpowder in a closed chamber
provided with escape valves would create a vacuum when the gases of combustion
cooled. Huygens, using a cylinder containing a piston, was able to move it in
this manner by the external atmospheric pressure.
The first commercially practical internal combustion engine was built by
a French engineer, ( Jean Joseph ) Etienne Lenoir, about 1859-1860. It used
illuminating gas as fuel. Two years later, Alphonse Beau de Rochas enunciated
the principles of the four-stroke cycle, but Nickolaus August Otto built the
first successful engine ( 1876 ) operating on this ...

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exhaust manifold is
provided to carry off the gases produced by combustion. The fuel is admitted to
each cylinder and the waste gases exhausted through mechanically operated poppet
valves or sleeve valves. The valves are normally held closed by the pressure of
springs and are opened at the proper time during the operating cycle by cams on
a rotating camshaft that is geared to the crankshaft . By the 1980s more
sophisticated fuel-injection systems, also used in diesel engines, had largely
replaced this traditional method of supplying the proper mix of air and fuel;
computer-controlled monitoring systems improved fuel economy and reduced
pollution.

Ignition

In all engines ...

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