Fenny Stratford - Invention of The Diesel Engine in Fenny Stratford

Invention of The Diesel Engine in Fenny Stratford

The world's first successful heavy oil engines were invented and built by Herbert Akroyd Stuart in Fenny Stratford. There is a plaque commemorating this at the westerly end of Denmark Street in Fenny Stratford opposite The Foundry public house - though the location of Akroyd Stuart's workshop is usually given as "Bletchley", which is a larger town adjoining Fenny Stratford. These engines were precursors to what is now known as the Diesel engine: Rudolf Diesel based his designs (1892) on Akroyd Stuart's proven inventions (1890) of direct (airless) fuel injection and compression ignition. An experimental model was tried out at the offices of the Fenny Stratford Times Newspaper, and the first production models were installed at the nearby Great Brickhill Waterworks where they were in operation from 1892 to 1923. (It has been argued that engines of this type might have become known as "Akroyds", had Diesel not been a rather paranoid person not prone to giving other inventors credit.)

Read more about this topic:  Fenny Stratford

Famous quotes containing the words invention of, invention, engine and/or stratford:

    For this invention of yours will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn it, by causing them to neglect their memory, inasmuch as, from their confidence in writing, they will recollect by the external aid of foreign symbols, and not by the internal use of their own faculties. Your discovery, therefore, is a medicine not for memory, but for recollection,—for recalling to, not for keeping in mind.
    Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)

    Correspondences are like smallclothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.
    Sydney Smith (1771–1845)

    The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is perfect, the engineer is nobody. Every new step in improving the engine restricts one more act of the engineer,—unteaches him.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Ful weel she soong the service dyvyne,
    Entuned in hir nose ful semely,
    And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly,
    After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
    For Frenssh of Parys was to hire unknowe.
    Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)