History of german combustion engine construction from 1860 to 1918
By DR.-ING. DR.-ING. E. H. FRIEDRICH SASS
PROFESSOR AN DER TECHNISCHEN UNIVERSITAT BERLIN
Inhaltsverzeichnis
From the beginnings to Lenoir (1673-1860)
Christian Huygens p. 2
Jean de Hautefeuille p. 3
Denis Papin p. 3
John Barber p. 4
Robert Street p. 4
Philippe Lebon p. 5
Isaac de Rivaz p. 5
William Cecil p. 5
Samuel Brown p. 6
Wellman L. Wright p. 6
William Barnett p. 7
Alfred Drake p. 8
Barsanti and Matteucci p. 8
Degrand p. 10
Lenoir and his engine p. 11
I. From the beginnings to Lenoir (1673-1860)
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Christian Huygens
The beginning of the history of the internal combustion engine has not been wrongly associated with the name Christian Huygens (1629-1695). The ingenious idea of the powder engine, which the great mathematician and physicist communicated to his brother in a letter in 16735, can indeed be seen as a precursor to the invention of the atmospheric gas engine, which Otto and Langen built 200 years later in Deutz. Huygens was living in Paris at the time, where he was busy pumping water from the Seine into the gardens of the newly built Palace of Versailles for the water features of Louis XIV. Figure I shows how HUYGENS thought of the solution to the problem. In the cylinders A-B, which are open at the top, The lower opening of which could be closed by the powder pan C, the piston D was suspended from a rope D-K that ran over the roller H; the payload G hung from the free end of the rope. If gunpowder was poured into the pan C and ignited by a fuse, the gas pressure had to throw the piston D at the bottom of the cylinder upwards. In its highest position, the piston opened the openings E and the powder gases flowed out through the leather tubes E-F, which acted as valves. A vacuum was created in the cylinder, so that the external air pressure compressed the leather tubes and moved the piston downwards, lifting the payload G. The weight of the piston increased the effective power. The device was implemented; Huygens demonstrated it to the French Academy of Sciences and to the Minister Colbert in 1673.
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Jean de Hautefeuille, Denis Papin
The Orléans-born AbM Jean de Hautefeuille (1647-1724) was working on the same problem at the same time as Huygens. His device had no piston; it consisted only of a box which, standing several meters above the level of the water to be raised, had four valves in its upper wall that opened outwards. A pipe reached from the bottom of the box to below the water level of the river6 • By burning gunpowder, a vacuum was to be created in the box, just as in Huygens's gunpowder machine, through which the water was sucked in. DE HAUTEFEUILLE published this idea in 1678 in his work "Pendule perpetuel avec la maniere d'elever l'eau par le moyen de la poudre a canon", which was printed in Paris. A little later, in 1682, he attempted to use the excess pressure of the powder gases directly to move a column of water, an idea that was to be encountered again 200 years later in the form of the Humphrey pump. In Paris, Denis Papin (1647-1710), who had studied medicine and practiced as a doctor, had contacted Huygens; he took part in Huygens' experiments. In 1688, PAPIN became professor of mathematics in Marburg, where he interested the Landgrave of Hesse in the idea of the powder machine. The Landgrave commissioned him to build such a machine, and PAPIN made a model, which is shown schematically in Figure 2.
| Figure 2
Diagram of the powder machine by Denis Papin (1688) a cylinder; b piston with valve opening upwards c; d supporting frame of the piston; e rope; f ignition pan PAPIN'S powder machine is based on the same principle as Huygens's. It differs from it only in minor details. Papin was Huygens' assistant in his younger years |
A ring-shaped piston b can move in a brass cylinder a with a diameter of 13 cm and a length of 40 cm. This forms the seat for the valve c that opens upwards. The piston is suspended by a frame d from a rope e that runs over rollers, the free end of which carries the payload. In the middle of the cylinder base is the movable ignition pan j, which is pressed from below by a weighted lever against the opening in the base. If the gunpowder placed in the pan is ignited when the piston is at the bottom, the piston is thrown upwards and the gases escape into the open air by lifting the valve. A vacuum is created in the cylinder; the external air pressure closes the valve and pushes the piston downwards, lifting the payload hanging on the rope. The chemical energy of the powder gases is converted into mechanical energy.
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John Barber, Robert Street
C. Matschoss calls Papin's powder machine "the prototype of the atmospheric gas engine" 7, an honorary title that already applies to Huygens' powder machine. PAPIN borrowed the basic idea from Huygens; the only new features in PAPIN's work are the valve c arranged in the piston (Fig. 2) and the device for filling the powder. An orderly operation was of course not possible with these primitive and dangerous devices, but the powder machines of Huygens and Papin are the oldest attempts in history to make energy available by combustion in a cylinder. The powder machine did not stimulate inventive activity in the following period, presumably because the use of gunpowder as fuel was a deterrent. It was not until a hundred years later, with the production of combustible gas from coal and wood and with the advent of the steam engine, that the conditions were met to start the combustion of gas in the cylinder of a It is not known exactly who invented the production of illuminating gas. The Speyer-born chemist Johann Joachim Becher (1635-1682) was one of the first to conduct experiments with the dry distillation of coal in London in 1680 and to ignite the gas that developed, which he called "philosophical light". The Englishman John Clayton also produced illuminating gas from coal at the beginning of the 18th century, and in 1786 Lord Dundonald used the gas escaping from coke ovens at Culross Abbey to light his country house. In 1786 the Frenchman Lebon carbonized wood in sealed containers and used his device, which he called a "thermo lamp", for heating and lighting. Philippe Lebon will be discussed in more detail later.
Only after the invention of illuminating gas, a hundred years after Denis Papin, were individual proposals for the construction of gas engines patented in England and France. In 1791, John Barber received the English patent no. 1833. He wanted to gasify wood, coal, oil or other hydrocarbons in an externally heated retort and collect and cool the resulting gases in a receiver. A pump would press the gases, mixed with air in the right proportions, into a vessel which he called an "exploder". Here the combustible mixture would be ignited and the emerging jet of fire would be directed against a paddle wheel. BARBER mentioned that it would be useful to spray water into the exploder; this would cool the nozzle and increase the volume of the jet of fire. It is the principle of the gas turbine that is proposed here for the first time, strangely enough before the piston engine.
Three years later, in 1794, Robert Street had an idea protected by English patent no. 1983, which Donkin8 calls "a great step in advance". Liquid fuels such as tar, turpentine or petroleum are sprayed onto the bottom of a standing cylinder, which is heated from below and is open at the top, so that they evaporate. The first part of the upward stroke of the piston is carried out by hand using a lever, which sucks air into the cylinder, so that a combustible mixture is formed.
If the piston moves further upwards, it opens an opening in the cylinder wall and establishes a connection with a constantly burning flame, which ignites the mixture. The piston is thrown upwards and its movement is transferred to the piston of a pump9 • It seems that the inventor was thinking of a water-retaining pump for English coal mines, the keeping of which dry was already a matter of concern to the mine owners at that time. Difficulties. Some of the ideas expressed by
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Philippe Lebon, Isaac de Rivaz, William Cecil
Street were later implemented in the early days of gas engine construction, such as the intake of air through the working piston and the ignition controlled by the piston through a constantly burning flame. Robert Street was the first to think of the use of liquid fuels for internal combustion engines.
In 1799, Philippe Lebon d'Humbersin received French patent no. 356 for a furnace for the dry distillation of fuels to produce illuminating gas, and in 1801 he had a supplementary patent issued for a double-acting two-stroke engine9, which he wanted to run using the gas. Two pumps driven by the engine were to press the gas and the air separately into a container arranged next to the working cylinder. LEBON wanted to ignite the mixture pre-compressed outside the cylinder using an electric spark and to direct the burning gas alternately to the two sides of the working piston through channels, similar to those in a steam engine. Philipe Lebon, who died a violent death in 1804 at the age of 35, according to a rumor that was later disputed, was the first to propose the pre-compression of the gas-air mixture, albeit outside the working cylinder, and was the first to mention spark ignition. Thus, Lebon is considered the inventor of the gas engine in France, even though the implementation of his ingenious ideas was doomed to failure due to the inadequacy of the technical means available at the time. Schöttler10 also believes: "Lebon is certainly the inventor of the gas engine."
Isaac de Rivaz, a Swiss from Sitten in the canton of Valais (1752-1829), patented the propulsion of a motor vehicle using an atmospheric engine powered by hydrogen gas in France in 1807. F. Schildberger5 and C. Davison 9 provide a picture and description of this first "motor vehicle". RIVAz suggests various means of igniting the gas mixture: in his patent sketch he alludes to electrical ignition, but he also speaks of ignition by compressing the oxygen - an early indication of the possibility of ignition by compression heat.
In 1820, the Reverend William Cecil demonstrated to the Cambridge Philosophical Society the model of an atmospheric gas engine he had built. It had a vertical cylinder open at the bottom; two horizontally arranged cylindrical containers were connected to the combustion chamber above the piston. The containers and the combustion chamber were filled with a hydrogen-air mixture; when this burned, a vacuum formed in the three chambers and the external air pressure drove the piston upwards. CECIL was the first to attempt to measure the pressure that occurs during the combustion of a hydrogen-air mixture. He used a sheet metal cylinder 50 mm in diameter with a solid base; the other end was closed by a neatly fitted plug that was held in place by several sheet metal strips lying parallel to the axis inside. The pressure at which the strips broke was determined by applying weight. From the number of strips torn under the ignition pressure, CECIL deduced the level of the combustion pressure, which he found to be 180 lb.jsq. in., 12 to 13 at. CECIL did not measure the ignition pressure in the running engine; he does not seem to have known about the indicator invented by JAMES WATT (1736-1819). In his lecture to the Cambridge Philosophical Society, CECIL says that he had carried out experiments with his engine. The ignitions were at 60 rpm.
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Donkin8 mentioned this note in his "Text Book on Gas, Oil, and Air Engines" (1894), but without giving it any credibility. It so obviously bears the stamp of a free invention by REITHMANN that it can only be seen as a contribution to shedding light on this figure, who is obsessed with inventor madness.
VI. In the Deutz gas engine factory until the departure of
Daimler and Maybach (1876-1882)
It was expected that Otto's new engine would free the management from the heavy worry about the technical development of the company. No competitor at home or abroad had anything even remotely equivalent to offer, and the business prospects seemed very good. But there was no real joy at what had been achieved; serious differences arose between Otto and Eugen langen, and when these had been resolved, Daimler's behavior made the collaboration so unbearable that there was no other way out than for Daimler to leave the company.
Temporary estrangement between Otto and Langen
OTTO had committed himself in his employment contract signed in 1872 to leave all inventions to the company free of charge for a period of twelve years; he had also waived the right to have patents registered in his name, in compliance with an older supervisory board resolution. Eugen Langen reminded Otto of this in a letter addressed to Otto on May 14, 1876, just a few months after the first four-stroke engine was put into operation:
I would like to ask you not to apply for these patents to be registered under your name, because despite all the respect which, as you know, I pay you personally, such an approach would be inconsistent, of which I would not want to be guilty even for the sake of my best friend. Your name should still be well known, let me see to that...
OTTO was deeply offended. He knew that he had done great things for the company and that Daimler could not offer anything of equal value. DAIMLER was allowed to register his inventions abroad under his name; in fact, DAIMLER, who was less modest in his demands, had been granted an option on company shares a few months earlier. OTTO felt humiliated by DAIMLER. He kept his anger to himself for over half a year; then he let his heart out in a letter that he wrote to Langen on January 16, 1877. Beginning with the unfriendly greeting "Mr. Eugen Langen, Cologne," he continued:
As a result of the minutes of the 23rd Supervisory Board meeting on January 12, which were sent to me, I have been informed that I have been informed of the reasons for the decision. M. I would like to point out that in previous protocols, decisions were only made to take out patents in the name of the gas engine factory, but no decisions were made that the name of the inventor should be kept secret when new inventions were published...
The current new engine stands on its own, it is the product of many years of thought and was not the result of any preliminary tests carried out with the money of the gas engine factory. I do not want to go into today how far my claims go to demand compensation from the gas engine factory for this invention...
But I would ask you to think a little about what our shares would be like today,
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if a stranger had made my invention and we were to compete with it with our breathing machines.
Assuming that the gas engine factory is not legally obliged to pay me any compensation for the engine, morally it is obliged to do so, and the path I must then take is clearly laid out for me...
The final twist was an undisguised threat of OTTo's departure from the company. But EUGEN LANGEN was not intimidated. He replied to him in great detail on January 22, 1877:
... I am sorry that in the 12 years that I have been in contact with you, so much bitterness has accumulated in you against me, as is expressed in your letter. But today I don't want to be anything but sentimental, I would just like to ask you to calmly consider how you came to me 12 years ago, what position you have today and what position you would have in the future if you quietly continue to fulfill your duty on the sober basis of your contract...
As fulfillment of a moral duty, you demand equal participation with me in the profits that G.M.F. makes and to justify this claim you go back to the times when we first met. Did you not live for the 12 years or did you forget the vicissitudes that occurred during that period? Did I increase my assets invested in G.M.F. relatively more than you did yours, or did you do that? Did I gain in external living conditions on account of gas engines, or did you do that? At first I was only a limited partner with 10,000 Tlr. and was not obliged to do any work in the business. How much capital have I raised with my friends today and how do you estimate the weeks, days and hours during which I worked for you in addition to my other difficult duties? ...
Now I come to what prompted your letter, to the minutes of the last meeting, through which I wanted on the one hand to preserve the G.M.F.'s right to baptize its own children, and on the other hand to express the hope that by naming the machine after you, and naming it after you in the most outstanding way possible, the relationship between the members of the management would not be disturbed but strengthened. Whatever external honor you could have wished for has been granted to you before you even said it ...
I did not agree at all with Mr. Daimler receiving compensation in the form of shares, because I could not recognize his legal claim; I submitted and went along with it because I wanted to create peace. And because I only had the latter in mind, I was pleased that Daimler did not object to the new machine being called "Otto's New Engine" ...
I would be very pleased if that would remove the obstacle ...
I am very sorry that at the moment when we have every reason to be happy, this harsh discord is being heard!
At the end of your letter you distinguish between legal and moral obligations. In my opinion, an obligation can only ever be a legal one; any performance that goes beyond that is not an obligation and cannot be demanded from the other side, but can only be accepted with gratitude if it is fulfilled. If there is something that you call a moral obligation, and I am not going to decide on that today, then wait for the time to mature ...
You are suggesting that our paths could now part; if this happens in the way that it seems, then, Mr. Otto, I am sorry that we ever met in life. But if you come to a different opinion after a calm, careful examination, then the incident will be buried and you will find in me not a new friend, but an old one. No false peace!
Until then, yours sincerely,
Eugen Langen
In his reply, Otto regrets "that the matter has taken such a sharp turn and that the purely personal is becoming the main issue," and continues: "Answering the individual points of your letter would lead to ramblings and excitement, which could well cause an immediate break." Then he suggests discussing the matter again in a smaller group, because "it is not my intention to wring anything out of you."
Eugen Langen replies on January 26th:
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If you want to treat the matter formally and professionally as a claim, then it is also more correct to choose the professional route and turn to the supervisory board with the request that they state now whether they are willing to give you, now or possibly later, a sum of M .... in shares of the gas engine factory at par as recognition for your performance.
The other way is that you calm down and find sufficient recognition for the time being in the fact that the machine is named after you that you are a happy and friendly member of the G.F. with complete devotion to me and your other employees, a communication which I would gladly accept as proof of your trust.
Langen's letter did not fail to have its effect; on 30 January 1877, Otto assured:
.. as long as I remain in my current position, I will fulfill my duties and I hope that, for my part, the friendly business relations with you and the
other employees will not be disturbed .... 36
Peace was thus restored. Langen wrote to Otto once more on February 5th:
... I am only coming back to your valuable lines of the 30th of this month to ask you to provide the relevant supervisory board minutes in a version that you can sign without hesitation. This would, as you wish, prevent any discussion of the matter before the supervisory board.
With respectful greetings!
Eugen Langen.
The entry in the minutes book read:
After prior consultation between Mr Eugen Langen and the members of the supervisory board, it was decided to introduce the new crank machine under the name "Otto's New Engine".
There is no mention of a cash payment or the transfer of shares. However, when Daimler left in 1882, Otto received them in the generous amount it deserved.
The DRP 532 is in the name of the Deutz gas engine factory. In the corresponding English patent, Otto is named as the inventor, without this being discussed by management.
The gas engine factory issues licenses
The reputation of Otto's new engine spread quickly, and many machine factories at home and abroad applied for construction permits. In West Germany, on EUGEN LANGEN's advice, no licenses were issued because they wanted to manufacture themselves; only for the German eastern provinces of Prussia, Silesia and some other
districts did Berlin-Anhalt'sche Maschinenbau AG receive the right to build the Deutz engines. In contrast, a larger number of licenses were granted abroad.
For Austria-Hungary, the company Langen & Wolf in Vienna took over the rights, for Belgium and Holland A. Fetu-Deliege in Liège, for France Ed. Sarazin, for Denmark G. A. Eickhoff in Copenhagen, for England Crossley Brothers in Manchester and for the United States the companies Schleicher, Schumm & Co. in Philadelphia and Sinker, Davis & Co. in Indianapolis.
The most important licensees were the brothers Francis William and ]ohn William Crossley, sons of an officer in the service of the Indian colonial army, who left them almost penniless when he died early. In 1866 the sons joined a factory that built machines for the manufacture of rubber, took it over the following year and in 1869 began building atmospheric gas engines as licensees of Deutz. Created as Otto's "New Engine"
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X. The Deutz gas engine factory after the departure of Daimler and Maybach until the death of Otto (1882-1891).
The Reich Court case concerning DRP 532 (1886)
Gottlieb Daimlers's successor on the board of the gas engine factory was the capable Hermann Schumm (p.60), who in 1877, together with the Schleicher brothers, had set up a branch in Philadelphia to introduce the Deutz gas engines to the United States. He then worked for his company in Paris for several years. He was a member of the Deutz board until his death in 1901.
There was no need to worry in Deutz about the sale of engines. In the 1881/82 financial year, more than 600 engines were sold for the first time, a figure that was maintained for several years and reached again in 1889/90 after it had decreased somewhat in previous years. It was the "A" type, on which Wilhelm Maybach was still working; it had been developed to a cylinder output of 50 hp. "The largest and newest system," wrote the Kölnische Zeitung on September 22, 1881 in a report on the International Electricity Exhibition in Paris, "is the one in the theater in Frankfurt am Main, where two coupled machines, each with 50 horsepower, have recently been installed for fire-fighting purposes and are capable of pressing the enormous amount of water of 5 cubic meters per minute into the pressure pipe leading up to the roof of the building within a few minutes of the relevant signal."
The main users of the gas engines were the printing companies. According to statistics on invoiced engines that have been preserved from that time, from 1876 to mid-1882, i.e. from Otto's invention to DAIMLER's departure, 1,396 engines were delivered to printing companies, 333 for lifting equipment, 254 for machine workshops, 211 for woodworking machines and 307 for pumps and irrigation systems.
Gradually, the price pressure exerted by the competition became noticeable, especially when the DRP 532 was dropped and other companies were able to use the four-stroke process. So in 1888 it was decided to design the A-Type as a plunger piston engine, without a crosshead. This meant that the horizontal machine was shorter; the unit weight of the 10 hp engine could be reduced from 460 to 320 kg/hp - a value that cannot of course be measured by our standards - and production was 10% cheaper. But it was not easy for the crosshead-less design to prevail. Up until the end of the 1892/93 financial year, the number of crosshead engines sold was still greater than that of the plunger piston design. Customers considered the crosshead design, which they were used to from steam engines, to be more solid than the plunger piston, which Güldner also opposed. The piston, which is already under high stress due to the pressure and temperature of the combustion gases, should not be given the additional task of acting as a straight guide; that is the job of the crosshead.
The vertical Deutzer "C" engine
Until the 1890s, the A engine made up the majority of the Deutzer delivery program; it was not until around 1893 that its production began to be phased out. In addition to
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In addition to the horizontal A-engine with slide control and flame ignition, during Otto's lifetime, up to 1891, only one vertical small engine, which was called "Type C", was produced in quantities of several thousand. This engine, which is shown in Figure 72 in elevation and in Figure 73 in section, was built for outputs of 0.5 to 8 HP; it was intended for small businesses and home industry. It could not cost much, so the vertical design was chosen, which was the cheapest and took up the least space. The smallest cylinder had a diameter of 65 mm and a stroke of 70 mm; the corresponding dimensions for the largest were 220 and 330 mm. The average piston speed was still very low at 1.75 rn/sec; it was only gradually and carefully increased to 1.87 rn/sec,
figures that of course cannot be compared with the characteristics of today's engines. The speed decreased with increasing size from 250 to 160 rpm. This resulted in a weight of 280 kg/hp.
As can be seen from the sectional drawing in Figure 73, the machine frame consists of three main parts: the wide, protruding base, the upper horizontal wall of which also forms the lower end of the working cylinder, the cylinder with cooling jacket, combustion chamber and cast-on working surfaces for the ignition slide and the exhaust valve, and the frame, which carries the bearings for the crankshaft and the control shaft a. This is driven by spur gears with half the speed of the crankshaft.