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19th Century

• 1806 – François Isaac de Rivaz invented a hydrogen powered engine, the first successful internal combustion engine.
• 1807 – Nicéphore Niépce and his brother Claude build a fluid piston internal combustion engine, the Pyréolophore and use it to power a boat up the river Saône.
• 1816 – Robert Stirling invented his hot air Stirling engine, and what we now call a "regenerator".⁵⁶
• 1821 – Michael Faraday builds an electricity-powered motor.
• 1824 – Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot first publishes that the efficiency of a heat engine depends on the temperature difference between an engine and its environment.
• 1837 – First American patent for an electric motor (U.S. patent 132).
• 1850 – The first explicit statement of the first and second law of thermodynamics, given by Rudolf Clausius.⁷
• 1860 – Lenoir 2 cycle engine⁸
• 1872 – Brayton Engine
• 1877 – Nicolaus Otto patents a four-stroke internal combustion engine (U.S. patent 194,047).⁹
• 1882 – James Atkinson invents the Atkinson cycle engine, now common in some hybrid vehicles.
• 1885 – Gottlieb Daimler patents the first supercharger.
• 1886 – Hot-bulb engine was established by Herbert Akroyd Stuart, Gottlieb Daimler invents the Petrol engine.¹⁰
• 1888 – An AC induction motor is featured in a paper published by Galileo Ferraris and is patented in the U.S. by Nikola Tesla.¹¹
• 1892 – Rudolf Diesel patents the Diesel engine (U.S. patent 608,845).¹²
• 1899 – Ferdinand Porsche creates the Lohner–Porsche, the first hybrid vehicle.

20th Century

• 1903 – The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices was published by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
• 1905 – Alfred Büchi patents the turbocharger.¹³
• 1913 – René Lorin invents the ramjet.¹⁴
• 1915 – Leonard Dyer invents a six-stroke engine, now known as the Crower six-stroke engine named after his reinventor Bruce Crower.
• 1926 – Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket.¹⁵¹⁶
• 1929 – Felix Wankel patents the Wankel rotary engine (U.S. patent 2,988,008).¹⁷
• Late 1930s – Hans von Ohain¹⁸ and Frank Whittle¹⁹ separately build pioneering gas turbine engines intended for aircraft propulsion, leading to the pioneering turbojet powered flights in 1939 Germany and 1941 England.
• 1939 – The BMW company's BMW 801 aviation radial engine pioneers the use of an early form of an engine control unit, the Kommandogerät.
• 1940s – Ralph Miller patents his Miller cycle engine.
• 1954 – Felix Wankel creates the first working Wankel engine.²⁰
• 1957 – Rambler Rebel announced Electrojector electronic fuel injection option, however no production models were offered with the option.
• 1964 – Ion engine invented.²¹
• 1966 – RD-0410 nuclear thermal rocket engine was ground-tested.
• 1960s – alternators replace generators on automobile engines.²²
• 1970s – electronically controlled ignition appears in automobile engines.
• 1975 – Catalytic converters are first widely introduced on production automobiles in the US to comply with tightening EPA regulations on auto exhaust.
• 1980s – electronically controlled ignition improved to reduce pollution.
• 1980s – electronic fuel injection appears on gasoline automobile engines.
• 1989 – The Bajulaz Six-Stroke Engine was invented by the Bajulaz S A company, based in Geneva, Switzerland; it has U.S. patent 4,809,511 and U.S. patent 4,513,568.
• 1990s – Hybrid vehicles that run on an internal combustion engine (ICE) and an electric motor charged by regenerative braking.

See also

• Timeline of heat engine technology for a view of the human understanding of the interchangeability of work and heat.

References

1. "Aeolipile | Steam Turbine, Invention & Usage | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://www.britannica.com/technology/aeolipile ↩

2. Dickinson, Henry Winram (1963). a short history of the steam engine. CUP Archive. https://books.google.com/books?id=qQU6AAAAIAAJ ↩

3. "Thomas Newcomen | Biography, Steam Engine, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 2024-08-01. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Newcomen ↩

4. Dickinson, H. W. (2022-01-26). A Short History of the Steam Engine. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-75104-2. 978-0-429-75104-2 ↩

5. "Robert Stirling | Heat engine, Renewable energy, Air engine | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Stirling ↩

6. "Stirling engine". Oxford Reference. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100533419 ↩

7. "Rudolf Clausius | Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer, Entropy | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rudolf-Clausius ↩

8. "Étienne Lenoir | Internal Combustion Engine, Automobile, Gas Engine | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 2024-07-31. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Etienne-Lenoir ↩

9. "Nikolaus Otto | Internal Combustion, Automobile Engines & Inventor | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 2024-06-06. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikolaus-Otto ↩

10. "Gottlieb Daimler | Automotive Pioneer, Internal Combustion Engine & Industrialist | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gottlieb-Daimler ↩

11. Bill Drury, Control Techniques Drives and Controls Handbook, page xiv https://books.google.com/books?id=vDQHzeEmSfUC&dq=tesla+Ferraris+induction&pg=PR14 ↩

12. "How Rudolf Diesel's engine changed the world". BBC News. 2016-12-19. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38302874 ↩

13. "Turbochargers – USC Viterbi School of Engineering". illumin.usc.edu. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://illumin.usc.edu/turbochargers/ ↩

14. "Ramjet | Supersonic, Jet Engines, Propulsion | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 2024-07-12. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://www.britannica.com/technology/ramjet ↩

15. "95 Years Ago: Goddard's First Liquid-Fueled Rocket - NASA". 2021-03-17. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://www.nasa.gov/history/95-years-ago-goddards-first-liquid-fueled-rocket/ ↩

16. seanm (2012-09-14). "Robert H. Goddard: American Rocket Pioneer". Smithsonian Institution Archives. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://siarchives.si.edu/history/featured-topics/stories/robert-h-goddard-american-rocket-pioneer ↩

17. "Wankel engine | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://www.britannica.com/technology/Wankel-engine ↩

18. "Jet Engines". cs.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/ww2/projects/jet-airplanes/planes.html ↩

19. "Sir Frank Whittle | Jet engine pioneer, RAF officer, engineer | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frank-Whittle ↩

20. "Wankel rotary engine", World Encyclopedia, Philip's, 2004, doi:10.1093/acref/9780199546091.001.0001, ISBN 978-0-19-954609-1, retrieved 2024-08-02 978-0-19-954609-1 ↩

21. Webb-Mack, Zoë. "A Brief History of Ion Propulsion". NASA Solar System Exploration. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/723/a-brief-history-of-ion-propulsion ↩

22. "Alternator | Generator, Voltage Regulator & AC Power | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 2024-07-12. Retrieved 2024-08-02. https://www.britannica.com/technology/alternator ↩