All About Engines

CHAPTER IX The Oil Engine THROUGHOUT the whole history of discovery and invention there are scores of cases in which men have struggled for generations to solve a problem, and when once it has been solved they pass from success to success so rapidly that the mind can hardly follow the changes as they occur. For a hundred years the internal combustion engine had been a veritable will-o’-the-wisp to men of a mecha- nical turn of mind. Often they felt that they were about to succeed, and always some unexpected diffi- culty arose so that they seemed as far away as ever from the goal of their ambition. But when the Otto gas engine was invented events moved rapidly— rapidly, that is to say, when one looks at the thou- sands of years during which man has been mastering natural forces, and rapidly even if only the period during which this particular object had been sought is passed in review. For the gas engine was intro- duced, as we have seen, in 1876, the petrol motor in 1884, and Priestman, of Hull, invented an oil engine in 1889. What, now, is an oil engine ? The answer to this question is that it is an internal combustion engine using as its fuel paraffin or petroleum, such as is 231