The Early Days of Internal Combustion Engines

[Beck Reilly]

What's the earliest a practical internal combustion engine could have been invented?

Who would be the pioneers of this technology?

What effects would the internal combustion engine have on the affairs of the day?

[danwild6]

Samuel Mory from New Hampshire in 1826 patented the first practical internal combustion engine.

I wouldn't expect to see an early version of the model T, but you could see early industrialization of agriculture, caterpillar tractors come to mind, as well as other industries(manufacturing being the most obvious to me). There would've been possible military applications, such as propeller driven rigid airships, the steam driven warship could nearly be skipped completely.

[Iñaki]

By the way, someone knows what happened with Beck Reilly?, I revised the posts from 2004, and he was very prolific but suddenly he disappeared of the board.

[Michael B]

the steam driven warship could nearly be skipped completely.
Unlikey. The British would have favoured coal because until the twentieth century they did not control significant oil fields. Furthermore practical development beyond isolated examples is going to require earlier development of drilling oil wells ( the first one was only drilled in the mid nineteenth century). Thus you are going to require faster development of the entire industry. I will agree that using the technology for drilling for water is a very good starting point.

[alt_historian]

Take a look at this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine#History

This is the one that interests me: "1206: Al-Jazari (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Jazari) designed a reciprocating piston engine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocating_engine)."

I mean, 1206? Just imagine it.

PS. Yes, I realise that wasn't a modern-type internal combustion engine, and wasn't even a steam engine or similar (see the Al-Jazari entry), but if the basic principles had only been picked up on and developed... ah well.

[alt_historian]

Bumity, bumpity, bumpiting free, the bumpys of bumpydon, bumples are we...

[alt_historian]

Oh, come on. Why do so many threads have to die?

Please, somebody, think of the plight of young threads...

[Merkava]

Just found this thread.
Many inventions were ideas way before their time. I suspect (not being an engineer) that a whole lot of other factors would have prevented a working internal combustion engine coming into being much earlier...
eg
- need the processes to convert oil into petroleum or diesel
- need materials (eg various metals) suitable for the demanding conditions within an engine
- probably need some of the other science to understand the how it works
- it need not have been UK
- manufacturing processes need inventing.

Just some examples.
My own AH that I am working on includes Bessemer Steel 50 years earlier than history, but I haven't thought to bring forward availability of internal combustion engine.