Timeline of Motor and Engine Technology

Timeline of motor and engine technology

• (c. 30–70 AD) – Hero of Alexandria describes the first documented steam-powered device, the aeolipile.
• 1698 – Thomas Savery builds a steam-powered water pump for pumping water out of mines.
• 1712 – Thomas Newcomen builds a piston-and-cylinder steam-powered water pump for pumping water out of mines.
• 1769 – James Watt patents his first improved steam engine.
• 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 Saone.
• 1816 – Robert Stirling invented his hot air Stirling engine, and what we now call a "regenerator".
• 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.
• 1877 – Nikolaus Otto patents a four-stroke internal combustion engine (U.S. Patent 194,047).
• 1882 – James Atkinson invents the Atkinson cycle engine, now common in some hybrid vehicles.
• 1885 – Gottlieb Daimler patents the first supercharger.
• 1888 – Nikola Tesla patents the induction motor (U.S. Patent 381,968).
• 1892 – Rudolf Diesel patents the Diesel engine (U.S. Patent 608,845).
• 1899– Ferdinand Porsche creates the first hybrid vehicle.
• 1905 – Alfred Büchi patents the turbocharger.
• 1913 – René Lorin invents the ramjet.
• 1915 – Leonard Dyer invents a six-stroke engine, now known as the Crower six-stroke engine named after his reinventor Bruce Crower.
• 1929 – Felix Wankel patents the Wankel rotary engine (U.S. Patent 2,988,008).
• Late 1930s – Hans von Ohain and Frank Whittle 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.
• 1960s – alternators replace generators on automobile engines.
• 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.