Clerk's Work On The Internal Combustion Engine
Dugald Clerk was the author of a comprehensive book covering the development of the oil and gas engine from its early inception, and including details of his own work in this area. The first edition was produced in 1886, and the notes here are taken from the 7th edition, revised and updated up to 1896.
Clerk began work on his own engine designs in October 1876. Up to this time the commercial engines available had been the Lenoir engine from 1860, which worked on a double-acting 2-stroke cycle, but spent half of each stroke drawing gas into the cylinder. The Hugon engine was a slightly improved version, but both were quite inefficient (95 and 85 cubic feet of gas per HP hour respectively), neither used compression. The next commercial engine available (from 1867) was the Otto & Langen free piston engine, which used atmospheric pressure for the power stroke, and had half the gas consumption of the Lenoir and Hugon engines. It was in May 1876 that Otto developed his engine using the single-acting 4-stroke cycle with compression in the cylinder. Clerk decided to develop an engine using compression, but with the 2-stroke cycle, as he could see benefit to weight and smoothness of operation through having twice as many power strokes.
Clerk initially experimented with engines that "were identical to the Lenoir in idea, but with separate compression and a novel system of ignition", one of these was exhibited in July 1879. However it was not until the end of 1880 that he succeeded in producing the Clerk engine operating on the 2-stroke cycle, which became the commercial product. Clerk states "The Clerk engine at present in the market was the first to succeed in introducing compression of this type, combined with ignition at every revolution ; many attempts had previously been made by other inventors, including Mr. Otto and the Messrs. Crossley, but all had failed in producing a marketable engine. It is only recently that the Messrs. Crossley have made the Otto engine in its twin form and so succeeded in getting impulse at every turn."
In "Gas and Oil Engines", Clerk refers to the significant earlier gas engine patents of Barnett in 1838 and Wright in 1833.
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