Gas Engine Patents of Note: Where it all began: The Otto

摘要

By the mid-1860s, the race was on to develop and perfect a gas-powered engine. Although steam engines had been providing the power to fuel a rapidly industrializing world, they were not without their limitations: Chief among them, the requisite for a large boiler to hold water and fuel to heat the water to steam. Engineers knew that if they could control an explosion of fuel driving a piston, they could create an engine with far-reaching capacity and application.