Steam and internal combustion engines

See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA

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Adamson, Daniel

Allen, John F.

Barber, John

Barsanti, Eugenio

Baumann, Karl

Beau de Rochas, Alphonse Eugène

Bodmer, Johann Georg

Bosch, Robert August

Branca, Giovanni de

Brayton, George Bailey

Brown, Samuel

Caprotti, Arturo

Carnot, Nicolas Léonard Sadi

Cecil, Revd William

Clerk, Sir Dugald

Corliss, George Henry

Diesel, Rudolph Christian Karl

Donkin, Bryan III

Edwards, Humphrey

Elder, John

Field, Joshua

Fox, Samson

Giffard, Baptiste Henry Jacques

Griffith, Alan Arnold

Gurney, Sir Goldsworthy

Hamilton, Harold Lee

Hancock, Walter

Hero of Alexandria

Hornblower, Jonathan

Howden, James

Joy, David

Kettering, Charles Franklin

Kirk, Alexander Carnegie

Knight, Margaret E.

Langen, Eugen

Laval, Carl Gustaf Patrik de

Lenoir, Jean Joseph Etienne

Levavasseur, Léon

McCoy, Elijah

McNaught, William

Matteucci, Felice

Maybach, Wilhelm

Murray, Matthew

Newcomen, Thomas

Otto, Nikolaus August

Pickard, James

Porta, Giovanni Battista della

Porter, Charles Talbot

Pounder, Cuthbert Coulson

Priestman, William Dent

Rateau, Auguste Camille-Edmond

Reynolds, Edwin

Ricardo, Sir Harry Ralph

Schmidt, Wilhelm

Séguin, Louis

Seguin, Marc

Sickels, Frederick Ellsworth

Simms, Frederick

Smeaton, John

Stuart, Herbert Akroyd

Stumpf, Johann

Todd, Leonard Jennett

Trevithick, Richard

Walschaert, Egide

Wankel, Felix

Wasborough, Matthew

Watt, James

Webb, Francis William

SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Harry Ricardo was the eldest child and only son of Halsey Ricardo (architect) and Catherine Rendel (daughter of Alexander Rendel, senior partner in the firm of consulting civil engineers that later became Rendel, Palmer and Tritton). He was educated at Rugby School and at Cambridge. While still at school, he designed and made a steam engine to drive his bicycle, and by the time he went up to Cambridge in 1903 he was a skilled craftsman. At Cambridge, he made a motor cycle powered by a petrol engine of his own design, and with this he won a fuel-consumption competition by covering almost 40 miles (64 km) on a quart (1.14 1) of petrol. This brought him to the attention of Professor Bertram Hopkinson, who invited him to help with research on turbulence and pre-ignition in internal combustion engines. After leaving Cambridge in 1907, he joined his grandfather's firm and became head of the design department for mechanical equipment used in civil engineering. In 1916 he was asked to help with the problem of loading tanks on to railway trucks. He was then given the task of designing and organizing the manufacture of engines for tanks, and the success of this enterprise encouraged him to set up his own establishment at Shoreham, devoted to research on, and design and development of, internal combustion engines.

Leading on from the work with Hopkinson were his discoveries on the suppression of detonation in spark-ignition engines. He noted that the current paraffinic fuels were more prone to detonation than the aromatics, which were being discarded as they did not comply with the existing specifications because of their high specific gravity. He introduced the concepts of "highest useful compression ratio" (HUCR) and "toluene number" for fuel samples burned in a special variable compression-ratio engine. The toluene number was the proportion of toluene in heptane that gave the same HUCR as the fuel sample. Later, toluene was superseded by iso-octane to give the now familiar octane rating. He went on to improve the combustion in side-valve engines by increasing turbulence, shortening the flame path and minimizing the clearance between piston and head by concentrating the combustion space over the valves. By these means, the compression ratio could be increased to that used by overhead-valve engines before detonation intervened. The very hot poppet valve restricted the advancement of all internal combustion engines, so he turned his attention to eliminating it by use of the single sleeve-valve, this being developed with support from the Air Ministry. By the end of the Second World War some 130,000 such aero-engines had been built by Bristol, Napier and Rolls-Royce before the piston aero-engine was superseded by the gas turbine of Whittle. He even contributed to the success of the latter by developing a fuel control system for it.

Concurrent with this was work on the diesel engine. He designed and developed the engine that halved the fuel consumption of London buses. He invented and perfected the "Comet" series of combustion chambers for diesel engines, and the Company was consulted by the vast majority of international internal combustion engine manufacturers. He published and lectured widely and fully deserved his many honours; he was elected FRS in 1929, was President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1944–5 and was knighted in 1948. This shy and modest, though very determined man was highly regarded by all who came into contact with him. It was said that research into internal combustion engines, his family and boats constituted all that he would wish from life.

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SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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Stuart's involvement with engines covered a period of less than ten years and was concerned with a means of vaporizing the heavier oils for use in the so-called oil engines. Leaving his native Yorkshire for Bletchley in Buckinghamshire, Stuart worked in his father's business, the Bletchley Iron and Tin Plate works. After finishing grammar school, he worked as an assistant in the Mechanical Engineering Department of the City and Guilds of London Technical College. He also formed a connection with the Finsbury Technical College, where he became acquainted with Professor William Robinson, a distinguished engineer eminent in the field of internal-combustion engines.

Resuming work at Bletchley, Stuart carried out experiments with engines. His first patent was concerned with new methods of vaporizing the fuel, scavenging systems and improvement of speed control. Two further patents, in 1890, specified substantial improvements and formed the basis of later engine designs. In 1891 Stuart joined forces with R.Hornsby and Sons of Grantham, a firm founded in 1815 for the manufacture of machinery and steam engines. Hornsby acquired all rights to Stuart's engine patents, and their superior technical resources ensured substantial improvements to Stuart's early design. The Hornsby-Ackroyd engines, introduced in 1892, were highly successful and found wide acceptance, particularly in agriculture. With failing health, Stuart's interest in his engine work declined, and in 1899 he emigrated to Australia, where in 1903 he became a partner in importing gas engines and gas-producing plants. Following his death in 1927, under the terms of his will he was interred in England; sadly, he also requested that all papers and materials pertaining to his engines be destroyed.

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SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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After leaving school in 1902, he went to the Ecole Polytechnique, Zurich, leaving in 1906 with an engineering diploma. He then spent a year with Professor A.Stodola, working on steam engines, turbines and internal combustion engines. He also conducted research in the strength of materials. After this, he spent two years as Research and Design Engineer at the Nuremberg works of Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg. He came to England in 1909 to join the British Westinghouse Co. Ltd in Manchester, and by 1912 was Chief Engineer of the Engine Department of that firm. The firm later became the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Co. Ltd (MV), and Baumann rose from Chief Mechanical Engineer through to, by 1929, Special Director and Member of the Executive Management Board; he remained a director until his retirement in 1949.

For much of his career, Baumann was in the forefront of power station steam-cycle development, pioneering increased turbine entry pressures and temperatures, in 1916 introducing multi-stage regenerative feed-water heating and the Baumann turbine multi-exhaust. His 105 MW set for Battersea "A" station (1933) was for many years the largest single-axis unit in Europe. From 1938 on, he and his team were responsible for the first axial-flow aircraft propulsion gas turbines to fly in England, and jet engines in the 1990s owe much to the "Beryl" and "Sapphire" engines produced by MV. In particular, the design of the compressor for the Sapphire engine later became the basis for Rolls-Royce units, after an exchange of information between that company and Armstrong-Siddeley, who had previously taken over the aircraft engine work of MV.Further, the Beryl engine formed the basis of "Gatric", the first marine gas turbine propulsion engine.

Baumann was elected to full membership for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1929 and a year later was awarded the Thomas Hawksley Gold Medal by that body, followed by their James Clayton Prize in 1948: in the same year he became the thirty-fifth Thomas Hawksley lecturer. Many of his ideas and introductions have stood the test of time, being based on his deep and wide understanding of fundamentals.

SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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During the thirty years prior to his death, Brayton devoted considerable effort to the development of internal-combustion engines. He designed the first commercial gas engine of American origin in 1872. An oil-burning engine was produced in 1875. An aptitude for mechanical innovation became apparent whilst he was employed at the Exeter Machine Works, New Hampshire, where he developed a successful steam generator for use in domestic and industrial heating systems. Brayton engines were distinguished by the method of combustion. A pressurized air-fuel mixture from a reservoir was ignited as it entered the working cylinder—a precursor of the constant-pressure cycle. A further feature of these early engines was a rocking beam. There exist accounts of Brayton engines fitted into river craft, and of one in a carriage which operated for a few months in 1872–3. However, the appearance of the four-stroke Otto engine in 1876, together with technical problems associated with backfiring into the fuel reservoir, prevented large-scale acceptance of the Brayton engine. Although Thompson Sterne \& Co. of Glasgow became licensees, the engine failed to gain usage in Britain. A working model of Brayton's gas engine is exhibited in the Museum of History and Technology in Washington, DC.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Trevithick's father was a tin-mine manager, and Trevithick himself, after limited formal education, developed his immense engineering talent among local mining machinery and steam-engines and found employment as a mining engineer. Tall, strong and high-spirited, he was the eternal optimist.

About 1797 it occurred to him that the separate condenser patent of James Watt could be avoided by employing "strong steam", that is steam at pressures substantially greater than atmospheric, to drive steam-engines: after use, steam could be exhausted to the atmosphere and the condenser eliminated. His first winding engine on this principle came into use in 1799, and subsequently such engines were widely used. To produce high-pressure steam, a stronger boiler was needed than the boilers then in use, in which the pressure vessel was mounted upon masonry above the fire: Trevithick designed the cylindrical boiler, with furnace tube within, from which the Cornish and later the Lancashire boilers evolved.

Simultaneously he realized that high-pressure steam enabled a compact steam-engine/boiler unit to be built: typically, the Trevithick engine comprised a cylindrical boiler with return firetube, and a cylinder recessed into the boiler. No beam intervened between connecting rod and crank. A master patent was taken out.

Such an engine was well suited to driving vehicles. Trevithick built his first steam-carriage in 1801, but after a few days' use it overturned on a rough Cornish road and was damaged beyond repair by fire. Nevertheless, it had been the first self-propelled vehicle successfully to carry passengers. His second steam-carriage was driven about the streets of London in 1803, even more successfully; however, it aroused no commercial interest. Meanwhile the Coalbrookdale Company had started to build a locomotive incorporating a Trevithick engine for its tramroads, though little is known of the outcome; however, Samuel Homfray's ironworks at Penydarren, South Wales, was already building engines to Trevithick's design, and in 1804 Trevithick built one there as a locomotive for the Penydarren Tramroad. In this, and in the London steam-carriage, exhaust steam was turned up the chimney to draw the fire. On 21 February the locomotive hauled five wagons with 10 tons of iron and seventy men for 9 miles (14 km): it was the first successful railway locomotive.

Again, there was no commercial interest, although Trevithick now had nearly fifty stationary engines completed or being built to his design under licence. He experimented with one to power a barge on the Severn and used one to power a dredger on the Thames. He became Engineer to a project to drive a tunnel beneath the Thames at Rotherhithe and was only narrowly defeated, by quicksands. Trevithick then set up, in 1808, a circular tramroad track in London and upon it demonstrated to the admission-fee-paying public the locomotive Catch me who can, built to his design by John Hazledine and J.U. Rastrick.

In 1809, by which date Trevithick had sold all his interest in the steam-engine patent, he and Robert Dickinson, in partnership, obtained a patent for iron tanks to hold liquid cargo in ships, replacing the wooden casks then used, and started to manufacture them. In 1810, however, he was taken seriously ill with typhus for six months and had to return to Cornwall, and early in 1811 the partners were bankrupt; Trevithick was discharged from bankruptcy only in 1814.

In the meantime he continued as a steam engineer and produced a single-acting steam engine in which the cut-off could be varied to work the engine expansively by way of a three-way cock actuated by a cam. Then, in 1813, Trevithick was approached by a representative of a company set up to drain the rich but flooded silver-mines at Cerro de Pasco, Peru, at an altitude of 14,000 ft (4,300 m). Low-pressure steam engines, dependent largely upon atmospheric pressure, would not work at such an altitude, but Trevithick's high-pressure engines would. Nine engines and much other mining plant were built by Hazledine and Rastrick and despatched to Peru in 1814, and Trevithick himself followed two years later. However, the war of independence was taking place in Peru, then a Spanish colony, and no sooner had Trevithick, after immense difficulties, put everything in order at the mines then rebels arrived and broke up the machinery, for they saw the mines as a source of supply for the Spanish forces. It was only after innumerable further adventures, during which he encountered and was assisted financially by Robert Stephenson, that Trevithick eventually arrived home in Cornwall in 1827, penniless.

He petitioned Parliament for a grant in recognition of his improvements to steam-engines and boilers, without success. He was as inventive as ever though: he proposed a hydraulic power transmission system; he was consulted over steam engines for land drainage in Holland; and he suggested a 1,000 ft (305 m) high tower of gilded cast iron to commemorate the Reform Act of 1832. While working on steam propulsion of ships in 1833, he caught pneumonia, from which he died.

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See also: Blenkinsop, John

SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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In 1869 Stumpf was commissioned by the Pope Manufacturing Company of Hertford, Connecticut, to set up two triple-expansion, vertical, Corliss pumping engines. He tried to simplify this complicated system and started research with the internal combustion engine and the steam turbine particularly as his models. The construction of steam turbines in several stages where the steam passed through in a unidirectional flow was being pursued at that time, and Stumpf wondered whether it would be possible to raise the efficiency of a reciprocating steam engine to the same thermal level as the turbine by the use of the uniflow principle.

Stumpf began to investigate these principles without studying the work of earlier pioneers like L.J. Todd, which he later thought would have led him astray. It was not until 1908, when he was Professor at the Institute of Technology in Berlin- Charlottenburg, that he patented his successful "una-flow" steam engine. In that year he took out six British patents for improvements in details on his original one Stumpf fully realized the thermal advantages of compressing the residual steam and was able to evolve systems of coping with excessive compression when starting. He also placed steam-jackets around the ends of the cylinder. Stumpf's first engine was built in 1908 by the Erste B runner Maschinenfabrik-Gesellschaft, and licences were taken out by many other manufacturers, including those in Britain and the USA. His engine was developed into the most economical type of reciprocating steam engine.

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SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Otto's involvement in internal combustion engines was first prompted by his interest in Lenoir's coal-gas engine of 1860. He built his first engine in 1861; in 1864, Otto's engine came to the attention of Eugen Langen, who arranged for the capital to set up the world's first engine company, N.A.Otto and Company, in Cologne. In 1867 the Otto- Langen free-piston internal combustion engine was exhibited at the Paris Exposition, where it won the gold medal. The company continued to expand, and five years after the Paris triumph its name was changed to the Gasmotoren Fabrik; amongst Otto's colleagues at this time were Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach .

Otto is most famous for the development of the four-stroke cycle which was to bear his name. He patented his version of this in 1876, although the principle of the four-stroke cycle had been patented by Alphonse Beau de Rochas fourteen years previously; Otto was the first, however, to put the principle into practice with the "Otto Silent Engine". Many thousands of Otto fourstroke engines had already been built by 1886, when a German patent lawyer successfully claimed that Otto had infringed the Beau de Rochas patent, and Otto's patent was declared invalid.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Railways and locomotives, Steam and internal combustion engines, Textiles, Weapons and armour

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John George Bodmer (as he was known in England) showed signs of great inventive ability even as a child. Soon after completing his apprenticeship to a local millwright, he set up his own work-shop at Zussnacht. One of his first inventions, in 1805, was a shell which exploded on impact. Soon after this he went into partnership with Baron d'Eichthal to establish a cotton mill at St Blaise in the Black Forest. Bodmer designed the water-wheels and all the machinery. A few years later they established a factory for firearms and Bodmer designed special machine tools and developed a system of interchangeable manufacture comparable with American developments at that time. More inventions followed, including a detachable bayonet for breech-loading rifles and a rifled, breech-loading cannon for 12 lb (5.4 kg) shells.

Bodmer was appointed by the Grand Duke of Baden to the posts of Director General of the Government Iron Works and Inspector of Artillery. He left St Blaise in 1816 and entered completely into the service of the Grand Duke, but before taking up his duties he visited Britain for the first time and made an intensive five-month tour of textile mills, iron works, workshops and similar establishments.

In 1821 he returned to Switzerland and was engaged in setting up cotton mills and other engineering works. In 1824 he went back to England, where he obtained a patent for his improvements in cotton machinery and set up a mill near Bolton incorporating his ideas. His health failing, he was obliged to return to Switzerland in 1828, but he was soon busy with engineering works there and in France. In 1833 he went to England again, first to Bolton and four years later to Manchester in partnership with H.H.Birley. In the next ten years he patented many more inventions in the fields of textile machinery, steam engines and machine tools. These included a balanced steam engine, a mechanical stoker, steam engine valve gear, gear-cutting machines and a circular planer or vertical lathe, anticipating machines of this type later developed in America by E.P. Bullard. The metric system was used in his workshops and in gearing calculations he introduced the concept of diametral pitch, which then became known as "Manchester Pitch". The balanced engine was built in stationary form and in two locomotives, but although their running was remarkably smooth the additional complication prevented their wider use.

After the death of H.H.Birley in 1846, Bodmer removed to London until 1848, when he went to Austria. About 1860 he returned to his native town of Zurich. He remained actively engaged in all kinds of inventions up to the end of his life. He obtained fourteen British patents, each of which describes many inventions; two of these patents were extended beyond the normal duration of fourteen years. Two others were obtained on his behalf, one by his brother James in 1813 for his cannon and one relating to railways by Charles Fox in 1847. Many of his inventions had little direct influence but anticipated much later developments. His ideas were sound and some of his engines and machine tools were in use for over sixty years. He was elected a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1835.

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SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Clerk began his engineering training at about the age of 15 in the drawing office of H.O.Robinson \& Company, Glasgow, and in his father's works. Meanwhile, he studied at the West of Scotland Technical College and then, from 1871 to 1876, at Anderson's College, Glasgow, and at the Yorkshire College of Science, Leeds. Here he worked under and then became assistant to the distinguished chemist T.E.Thorpe, who set him to work on the fractional distillation of petroleum, which was to be useful to him in his later work. At that time he had intended to become a chemical engineer, but seeing a Lenoir gas engine at work, after his return to Glasgow, turned his main interest to gas and other internal combustion engines. He pursued his investigations first at Thomson, Sterne \& Company (1877–85) and then at Tangyes of Birmingham (1886–88. In 1888 he began a lifelong partnership in Marks and Clerk, consulting engineers and patent agents, in London.

Beginning his work on gas engines in 1876, he achieved two patents in the two following years. In 1878 he made his principal invention, patented in 1881, of an engine working on the two-stroke cycle, in which the piston is powered during each revolution of the crankshaft, instead of alternate revolutions as in the Otto four-stroke cycle. In this engine, Clerk introduced supercharging, or increasing the pressure of the air intake. Many engines of the Clerk type were made but their popularity waned after the patent for the Otto engine expired in 1890. Interest was later revived, particularly for application to large gas engines, but Clerk's engine eventually came into its own where simple, low-power motors are needed, such as in motor cycles or motor mowers.

Clerk's work on the theory and design of gas engines bore fruit in the book The Gas Engine (1886), republished with an extended text in 1909 as The Gas, Petrol and Oil Engine; these and a number of papers in scientific journals won him international renown. During and after the First World War, Clerk widened the scope of his interests and served, often as chairman, on many bodies in the field of science and industry.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Bryan Donkin was the eldest son of John Donkin (1802–54) and grandson of Bryan Donkin I (1768–1855). He was educated at University College, London, and at the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Métiers in Paris, and then served an apprenticeship in the firm established by his grandfather. He assisted his uncle, Bryan Donkin II (1809–93), in setting up paper mills at St Petersburg. He became a partner in the Donkin firm in 1868 and Chairman in 1889, and retained this position after the amalgamation with Clench \& Co. of Chesterfield in 1900. Bryan Donkin was one of the first engineers to carry out scientific tests on steam engines and boilers, the results of his experiments being reported in many papers to the engineering institutions. In the 1890s his interests extended to the internal-combustion engine and he translated Rudolf Diesel's book Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Motor. He was a frequent contributor to the weekly journal The Engineer. He was a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, as well as of many other societies, including the Royal Institution, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Société Industrielle de Mulhouse and the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure. In his experimental work he often collaborated with others, notably Professor A.B.W.Kennedy (1847–1928), with whom he was also associated in the consulting engineering firm of Kennedy \& Donkin.

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SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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Jonathan came from a family with an engineering tradition: his grandfather Joseph had worked under Thomas Newcomen. Jonathan was the sixth child in a family of thirteen whose names all began with "J". In 1781 he was living at Penryn, Cornwall and described himself as a plumber, brazier and engineer. As early as 1776, when he wished to amuse himself by making a small st-eam engine, he wanted to make something new and wondered if the steam would perform more than one operation in an engine. This was the foundation for his compound engine. He worked on engines in Cornwall, and in 1778 was Engineer at the Ting Tang mine where he helped Boulton \& Watt erect one of their engines. He was granted a patent in 1781 and in that year tried a large-scale experiment by connecting together two engines at Wheal Maid. Very soon John Winwood, a partner in a firm of iron founders at Bristol, acquired a share in the patent, and in 1782 an engine was erected in a colliery at Radstock, Somerset. This was probably not very successful, but a second was erected in the same area. Hornblower claimed greater economy from his engines, but steam pressures at that time were not high enough to produce really efficient compound engines. Between 1790 and 1794 ten engines with his two-cylinder arrangement were erected in Cornwall, and this threatened Boulton \& Watt's near monopoly. At first the steam was condensed by a surface condenser in the bottom of the second, larger cylinder, but this did not prove very successful and later a water jet was used. Although Boulton \& Watt proceeded against the owners of these engines for infringement of their patent, they did not take Jonathan Hornblower to court. He tried a method of packing the piston rod by a steam gland in 1781 and his work as an engineer must have been quite successful, for he left a considerable fortune on his death.

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SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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William was the second son and one of eleven children of Samuel Priestman, who had moved to Hull after retiring as a corn miller in Kirkstall, Leeds, and who in retirement had become a director of the North Eastern Railway Company. The family were strict Quakers, so William was sent to the Quaker School in Bootham, York. He left school at the age of 17 to start an engineering apprenticeship at the Humber Iron Works, but this company failed so the apprenticeship was continued with the North Eastern Railway, Gateshead. In 1869 he joined the hydraulics department of Sir William Armstrong \& Company, Newcastle upon Tyne, but after a year there his father financed him in business at a small, run down works, the Holderness Foundry, Hull. He was soon joined by his brother, Samuel, their main business being the manufacture of dredging equipment (grabs), cranes and winches. In the late 1870s William became interested in internal combustion engines. He took a sublicence to manufacture petrol engines to the patents of Eugène Etève of Paris from the British licensees, Moll and Dando. These engines operated in a similar manner to the non-compression gas engines of Lenoir. Failure to make the two-stroke version of this engine work satisfactorily forced him to pay royalties to Crossley Bros, the British licensees of the Otto four-stroke patents.

Fear of the dangers of petrol as a fuel, reflected by the associated very high insurance premiums, led William to experiment with the use of lamp oil as an engine fuel. His first of many patents was for a vaporizer. This was in 1885, well before Ackroyd Stuart. What distinguished the Priestman engine was the provision of an air pump which pressurized the fuel tank, outlets at the top and bottom of which led to a fuel atomizer injecting continuously into a vaporizing chamber heated by the exhaust gases. A spring-loaded inlet valve connected the chamber to the atmosphere, with the inlet valve proper between the chamber and the working cylinder being camoperated. A plug valve in the fuel line and a butterfly valve at the inlet to the chamber were operated, via a linkage, by the speed governor; this is believed to be the first use of this method of control. It was found that vaporization was only partly achieved, the higher fractions of the fuel condensing on the cylinder walls. A virtue was made of this as it provided vital lubrication. A starting system had to be provided, this comprising a lamp for preheating the vaporizing chamber and a hand pump for pressurizing the fuel tank.

Engines of 2–10 hp (1.5–7.5 kW) were exhibited to the press in 1886; of these, a vertical engine was installed in a tram car and one of the horizontals in a motor dray. In 1888, engines were shown publicly at the Royal Agricultural Show, while in 1890 two-cylinder vertical marine engines were introduced in sizes from 2 to 10 hp (1.5–7.5 kW), and later double-acting ones up to some 60 hp (45 kW). First, clutch and gearbox reversing was used, but reversing propellers were fitted later (Priestman patent of 1892). In the same year a factory was established in Philadelphia, USA, where engines in the range 5–20 hp (3.7–15 kW) were made. Construction was radically different from that of the previous ones, the bosses of the twin flywheels acting as crank discs with the main bearings on the outside.

On independent test in 1892, a Priestman engine achieved a full-load brake thermal efficiency of some 14 per cent, a very creditable figure for a compression ratio limited to under 3:1 by detonation problems. However, efficiency at low loads fell off seriously owing to the throttle governing, and the engines were heavy, complex and expensive compared with the competition.

Decline in sales of dredging equipment and bad debts forced the firm into insolvency in 1895 and receivers took over. A new company was formed, the brothers being excluded. However, they were able to attend board meetings, but to exert no influence. Engine activities ceased in about 1904 after over 1,000 engines had been made. It is probable that the Quaker ethics of the brothers were out of place in a business that was becoming increasingly cut-throat. William spent the rest of his long life serving others.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy, Railways and locomotives, Steam and internal combustion engines, Telecommunications

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Leaving his native village for Paris at the age of 16, Lenoir became a metal enameller. Experiments with various electroplating processes provided a useful knowledge of electricity that showed in many of his later ideas. Electric ignition, although somewhat unreliable, was a feature of the Lenoir gas engine which appeared in 1860. Resembling the steam engine of the day, Lenoir engines used a non-compression cycle of operations, in which the gas-air mixture of about atmospheric pressure was being ignited at one-third of the induction stroke. The engines were double acting. About five hundred of Lenoir's engines were built, mostly in Paris by M.Hippolyte Marinoni and by Lefébvre; the Reading Ironworks in England built about one hundred. Many useful applications of the engine are recorded, but the explosive shock that occurred on ignition, together with the unreliable ignition systems, prevented large-scale acceptance of the engine in industry. However, Lenoir's effort and achievements stimulated much discussion, and N.A. Otto is reported to have carried out his first experiments on a Lenoir engine.

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SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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A distinguished hydraulic engineer, Matteucci is more widely known for his work on early internal-combustion engines. In 1851, during a landreclamation project in Florence, he became acquainted with Eugenio Barsanti. Together they succeeded in designing and producing a number of the first type of gas engines to produce a vacuum within a closed cylinder, atmospheric pressure then being utilized to produce the power stroke. The principle was demonstrated by Cecil in 1820 and was used by Samuel Brown in 1827 and by N.A. Otto in 1867. The company Società Promotrice del Nuovo Motore Barsanti e Matteucci was formed in 1860, but ill health forced Matteucci to resign in 1862, and in 1864 Barsanti, whilst negotiating mass production of engines with Cockerill of Seraing, Belgium, contracted typhoid and later died. Efforts to continue the business in Italy subsequently failed and Matteucci returned to his engineering practice.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Orphaned as a child, Hamilton went to work for Southern Pacific Railroad in his teens, and then worked for several other companies. In his spare time he learned mathematics and physics from a retired professor. In 1911 he joined the White Motor Company, makers of road motor vehicles in Denver, Colorado, where he had gone to recuperate from malaria. He remained there until 1922, apart from an eighteenth-month break for war service.

Upon his return from war service, Hamilton found White selling petrol-engined railbuses with mechanical transmission, based on road vehicles, to railways. He noted that they were not robust enough and that the success of petrol railcars with electric transmission, built by General Electric since 1906, was limited as they were complex to drive and maintain. In 1922 Hamilton formed, and became President of, the Electro- Motive Engineering Corporation (later Electro-Motive Corporation) to design and produce petrol-electric rail cars. Needing an engine larger than those used in road vehicles, yet lighter and faster than marine engines, he approached the Win ton Engine Company to develop a suitable engine; in addition, General Electric provided electric transmission with a simplified control system. Using these components, Hamilton arranged for his petrol-electric railcars to be built by the St Louis Car Company, with the first being completed in 1924. It was the beginning of a highly successful series. Fuel costs were lower than for steam trains and initial costs were kept down by using standardized vehicles instead of designing for individual railways. Maintenance costs were minimized because Electro-Motive kept stocks of spare parts and supplied replacement units when necessary. As more powerful, 800 hp (600 kW) railcars were produced, railways tended to use them to haul trailer vehicles, although that practice reduced the fuel saving. By the end of the decade Electro-Motive needed engines more powerful still and therefore had to use cheap fuel. Diesel engines of the period, such as those that Winton had made for some years, were too heavy in relation to their power, and too slow and sluggish for rail use. Their fuel-injection system was erratic and insufficiently robust and Hamilton concluded that a separate injector was needed for each cylinder.

In 1930 Electro-Motive Corporation and Winton were acquired by General Motors in pursuance of their aim to develop a diesel engine suitable for rail traction, with the use of unit fuel injectors; Hamilton retained his position as President. At this time, industrial depression had combined with road and air competition to undermine railway-passenger business, and Ralph Budd, President of the Chicago, Burlington \& Quincy Railroad, thought that traffic could be recovered by way of high-speed, luxury motor trains; hence the Pioneer Zephyr was built for the Burlington. This comprised a 600 hp (450 kW), lightweight, two-stroke, diesel engine developed by General Motors (model 201 A), with electric transmission, that powered a streamlined train of three articulated coaches. This train demonstrated its powers on 26 May 1934 by running non-stop from Denver to Chicago, a distance of 1,015 miles (1,635 km), in 13 hours and 6 minutes, when the fastest steam schedule was 26 hours. Hamilton and Budd were among those on board the train, and it ushered in an era of high-speed diesel trains in the USA. By then Hamilton, with General Motors backing, was planning to use the lightweight engine to power diesel-electric locomotives. Their layout was derived not from steam locomotives, but from the standard American boxcar. The power plant was mounted within the body and powered the bogies, and driver's cabs were at each end. Two 900 hp (670 kW) engines were mounted in a single car to become an 1,800 hp (l,340 kW) locomotive, which could be operated in multiple by a single driver to form a 3,600 hp (2,680 kW) locomotive. To keep costs down, standard locomotives could be mass-produced rather than needing individual designs for each railway, as with steam locomotives. Two units of this type were completed in 1935 and sent on trial throughout much of the USA. They were able to match steam locomotive performance, with considerable economies: fuel costs alone were halved and there was much less wear on the track. In the same year, Electro-Motive began manufacturing diesel-electrie locomotives at La Grange, Illinois, with design modifications: the driver was placed high up above a projecting nose, which improved visibility and provided protection in the event of collision on unguarded level crossings; six-wheeled bogies were introduced, to reduce axle loading and improve stability. The first production passenger locomotives emerged from La Grange in 1937, and by early 1939 seventy units were in service. Meanwhile, improved engines had been developed and were being made at La Grange, and late in 1939 a prototype, four-unit, 5,400 hp (4,000 kW) diesel-electric locomotive for freight trains was produced and sent out on test from coast to coast; production versions appeared late in 1940. After an interval from 1941 to 1943, when Electro-Motive produced diesel engines for military and naval use, locomotive production resumed in quantity in 1944, and within a few years diesel power replaced steam on most railways in the USA.

Hal Hamilton remained President of Electro-Motive Corporation until 1942, when it became a division of General Motors, of which he became Vice-President.

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SUBJECT AREA: Public utilities, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Edwin Reynolds grew up at a time when formal engineering education in America was almost unavailable, but through his genius and his experience working under such masters as G.H. Corliss and William Wright, he developed into one of the best mechanical engineers in the country. When he was Plant Superintendent for the Corliss Steam Engine Company, he built the giant Corliss valve steam engine displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition. In July 1877 he left the Corliss Steam Engine Company to join Edward Allis at his Reliance Works, although he was offered a lower salary. In 1861 Allis had moved his business to the Menomonee Valley, where he had the largest foundry in the area. Immediately on his arrival with Allis, Reynolds began desig-ning and building the "Reliance-Corliss" engine, which becamea symbol of simplicity, economy and reliability. By early 1878 the new engine was so successful that the firm had a six-month backlog of orders. In 1888 he built the first triple-expansion waterworks-pumping engine in the United States for the city of Milwaukee, and in the same year he patented a new design of blowing engine for blast furnaces. He followed this in March 1892 with the first steam engine sets coupled directly to electric generators when Allis-Chalmers contracted to build two Corliss cross-compound engines for the Narragansett Light Company of Providence, Rhode Island. In 1893, one of the impressive attractions at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago was the 3,000 hp (2,200 kW) quadruple-expansion Reynolds-Corliss engine designed by Reynolds, who continued to make significant improvements and gained worldwide recognition of his outstanding achievements in engine building.

Reynolds was asked to go to New York in 1898 for consultation about some high-horsepower engines for the Manhattan transport system. There, 225 railway locomotives were to be replaced by electric trains, which would be supplied from one generating station producing 60,000 hp (45,000 kW). Reynolds sketched out his ideas for 10,000 hp (7,500 kW) engines while on the train. Because space was limited, he suggested a four-cylinder design with two horizontal-high-pressure cylinders and two vertical, low-pressure ones. One cylinder of each type was placed on each side of the flywheel generator, which with cranks at 135° gave an exceptionally smooth-running compact engine known as the "Manhattan". A further nine similar engines that were superheated and generated three-phase current were supplied in 1902 to the New York Interborough Rapid Transit Company. These were the largest reciprocating steam engines built for use on land, and a few smaller ones with a similar layout were installed in British textile mills.

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SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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Corliss's father was a physician and surgeon. The son was educated at Greenwich, New York, but while he showed an aptitude for mathematics and mechanics he first of all became a storekeeper and then clerk, bookkeeper, salesperson and official measurer and inspector of the cloth produced at W.Mowbray \& Son. He went to the Castleton Academy, Vermont, for three years and at the age of 21 returned to a store of his own in Greenwich. Complaints about stitching in the boots he sold led him to patent a sewing machine. He approached Fairbanks, Bancroft \& Co., Providence, Rhode Island, machine and steam engine builders, about producing his machine, but they agreed to take him on as a draughtsman providing he abandoned it. Corliss moved to Providence with his family and soon revolutionized the design and construction of steam engines. Although he started working out ideas for his engine in 1846 and completed one in 1848 for the Providence Dyeing, Bleaching and Calendering Company, it was not until March 1849 that he obtained a patent. By that time he had joined John Barstow and E.J.Nightingale to form a new company, Corliss Nightingale \& Co., to build his design of steam-engines. He used paired valves, two inlet and two exhaust, placed on opposite sides of the cylinder, which gave good thermal properties in the flow of steam. His wrist-plate operating mechanism gave quick opening and his trip mechanism allowed the governor to regulate the closure of the inlet valve, giving maximum expansion for any load. It has been claimed that Corliss should rank equally with James Watt in the development of the steam-engine. The new company bought land in Providence for a factory which was completed in 1856 when the Corliss Engine Company was incorporated. Corliss directed the business activities as well as technical improvements. He took out further patents modifying his valve gear in 1851, 1852, 1859, 1867, 1875, 1880. The business grew until well over 1,000 workers were employed. The cylindrical oscillating valve normally associated with the Corliss engine did not make its appearance until 1850 and was included in the 1859 patent. The impressive beam engine designed for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition by E. Reynolds was the product of Corliss's works. Corliss also patented gear-cutting machines, boilers, condensing apparatus and a pumping engine for waterworks. While having little interest in politics, he represented North Providence in the General Assembly of Rhode Island between 1868 and 1870.

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SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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When Arthur Woolf left the Griffin Brewery, London, in October 1808, he formed a partnership with Humphrey Edwards, described as a millwright at Mill Street, Lambeth, where they started an engine works to build Woolf's type of compound engine. A number of small engines were constructed and other ordinary engines modified with the addition of a high-pressure cylinder. Improvements were made in each succeeding engine, and by 1811 a standard form had been evolved. During this experimental period, engines were made with cylinders side by side as well as the more usual layout with one behind the other. The valve gear and other details were also improved. Steam pressure may have been around 40 psi (2.8 kg/cm²). In an advertisement of February 1811, the partners claimed that their engines had been brought to such a state of perfection that they consumed only half the quantity of coal required for engines on the plan of Messrs Boulton \& Watt. Woolf visited Cornwall, where he realized that more potential for his engines lay there than in London; in May 1811 the partnership was dissolved, with Woolf returning to his home county. Edwards struggled on alone in London for a while, but when he saw a more promising future for the engine in France he moved to Paris. On 25 May 1815 he obtained a French patent, a Brevet d'importation, for ten years. A report in 1817 shows that during the previous two years he had imported into France fifteen engines of different sizes which were at work in eight places in various parts of the country. He licensed a mining company in the north of France to make twenty-five engines for winding coal. In France there was always much more interest in rotative engines than pumping ones. Edwards may have formed a partnership with Goupil \& Cie, Dampierre, to build engines, but this is uncertain. He became a member of the firm Scipion, Perrier, Edwards \& Chappert, which took over the Chaillot Foundry of the Perrier Frères in Paris, and it seems that Edwards continued to build steam engines there for the rest of his life. In 1824 it was claimed that he had made about 100 engines in England and another 200 in France, but this is probably an exaggeration.

The Woolf engine acquired its popularity in France because its compound design was more economical than the single-cylinder type. To enable it to be operated safely, Edwards first modified Woolf s cast-iron boiler in 1815 by placing two small drums over the fire, and then in 1825 replaced the cast iron with wrought iron. The modified boiler was eventually brought back to England in the 1850s as the "French" or "elephant" boiler.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Metallurgy, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Adamson was apprenticed between 1835 and 1841 to Timothy Hackworth, then Locomotive Superintendent on the Stockton \& Darlington Railway. After this he was appointed Draughtsman, then Superintendent Engineer, at that railway's locomotive works until in 1847 he became Manager of Shildon Works. In 1850 he resigned and moved to act as General Manager of Heaton Foundry, Stockport. In the following year he commenced business on his own at Newton Moor Iron Works near Manchester, where he built up his business as an iron-founder and boilermaker. By 1872 this works had become too small and he moved to a 4 acre (1.6 hectare) site at Hyde Junction, Dukinfield. There he employed 600 men making steel boilers, heavy machinery including mill engines fitted with the American Wheelock valve gear, hydraulic plant and general millwrighting. His success was based on his early recognition of the importance of using high-pressure steam and steel instead of wrought iron. In 1852 he patented his type of flanged seam for the firetubes of Lancashire boilers, which prevented these tubes cracking through expansion. In 1862 he patented the fabrication of boilers by drilling rivet holes instead of punching them and also by drilling the holes through two plates held together in their assembly positions. He had started to use steel for some boilers he made for railway locomotives in 1857, and in 1860, only four years after Bessemer's patent, he built six mill engine boilers from steel for Platt Bros, Oldham. He solved the problems of using this new material, and by his death had made c.2,800 steel boilers with pressures up to 250 psi (17.6 kg/cm²).

He was a pioneer in the general introduction of steel and in 1863–4 was a partner in establishing the Yorkshire Iron and Steel Works at Penistone. This was the first works to depend entirely upon Bessemer steel for engineering purposes and was later sold at a large profit to Charles Cammell \& Co., Sheffield. When he started this works, he also patented improvements both to the Bessemer converters and to the engines which provided their blast. In 1870 he helped to turn Lincolnshire into an important ironmaking area by erecting the North Lincolnshire Ironworks. He was also a shareholder in ironworks in South Wales and Cumberland.

He contributed to the development of the stationary steam engine, for as early as 1855 he built one to run with a pressure of 150 psi (10.5 kg/cm) that worked quite satisfactorily. He reheated the steam between the cylinders of compound engines and then in 1861–2 patented a triple-expansion engine, followed in 1873 by a quadruple-expansion one to further economize steam. In 1858 he developed improved machinery for testing tensile strength and compressive resistance of materials, and in the same year patents for hydraulic lifting jacks and riveting machines were obtained.

He was a founding member of the Iron and Steel Institute and became its President in 1888 when it visited Manchester. The previous year he had been President of the Institution of Civil Engineers when he was presented with the Bessemer Gold Medal. He was a constant contributor at the meetings of these associations as well as those of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He did not live to see the opening of one of his final achievements, the Manchester Ship Canal. He was the one man who, by his indomitable energy and skill at public speaking, roused the enthusiasm of the people in Manchester for this project and he made it a really practical proposition in the face of strong opposition.

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