WI: Earlier Internal Combustion Engine

IOTL, according to Wikipedia, Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci invented patented a design for 4-cycle internal combustion engine in 1854, which was lost in later years; further they didn't have a working prototype until 1860, which was subsequently destroyed.

In the same period Pietro Benini successfully designed a working prototype of Barsanti & Matteucci's design in 1856, and made several improvements to it, eventually supplying 5 HP. Benini's design was used in his factory in Floerence, but never expanded beyond there, and as Benini himself wasn't an acute businessman his factory was sold off soon after.

Instead of thinking to attach the engine to a vehicle (at the time limited mostly to trains or ships), all three sought the internal combustion engine to use in industrial processes. They wanted to replace traditional coal engines in factories with their new design, believing it to be safer, cleaner, and more efficient.

All three men worked in Florence, which, along with the rest of Italy, wasn't exactly stable or prosperous in the time period, one of the underlying reasons for these early designs failure. WI though ITTL the Florentine Republic survived the 1848 period, likely in combination with the Roman Republic it was inspired by and tied to, and in the context of a liberal unified Italy. Therefore the Barsanti-Matteucci engine, with Benini's improvements, goes into mass-production sometime early-to-mid 1860s, and likely gains widespread use in factories across the North Italian plain. So what happens next, whats the big changes from IOTL? This isn't my area of expertise so thus I'm hoping somehow on the boards has some good information on the period's technology and economics.
 
...So what happens next, whats the big changes from IOTL? This isn't my area of expertise so thus I'm hoping somehow on the boards has some good information on the period's technology and economics.

I have to admit it isn't particularly my area of "expertise" either. One good thing about AH is that it asks probing questions of one's world-view in general. Your question makes me realize I have a sort of Catch-22 attitude. If you had not produced hard evidence that a somewhat working IC engine existed this early, I'd airily declaim that the technology was just not mature enough yet. But having produced this evidence, I now want to say "Aha! A sort of practical machine did exist--yet it did not 'take off;' this surely demonstrates that the technology was not yet mature enough..."

So yes, we need people who really know a thing or two about the actual state of metallurgy, precision machining, economic potentials and likely areas of application, and whether the desire to employ and improve IC engines of this design would plausibly spur improvements in the basic tech needed to deliver on the promise to faster development than OTL.

But it seems to me that what we get in these threads is enthusiasts who think that with a new idea here or there great leaps forward would be possible with ease, opposed by naysayers (such as, you've spurred me to admit, myself) who think that technology is an integrated whole that can't be much accelerated by a random idea here or there. There are periods in history where I would concede that a good hard jolt might speed things up, but these would tend to be places and times where the infrastructure was largely lacking. Vice versa, I think of the latter half of the 19th century as one where enthusiasm for technical development was about as widespread and supported by society in general in many places as is humanly possible, and therefore doubt that this is a period where the general pace can be accelerated much without a massive injection of lots of ASB knowledge.

A direct link to information on the Barsanti/Matteucci design would be appreciated.

I've learned to try and answer such questions myself rather than wait for others to; here's the Wikipedia link I found; it doesn't say much and its links are to a YouTube presentation (as a hearing-impaired person with dubious faith in my computer/internet setup to present intelligible video and less in my ability to hear accurately, I am not going there) and this site which leads to this (and possibly other) technical page.

I don't really have time right now to give that latter the proper study it deserves; hopefully some of our engine experts can.

My impression is, the drawbacks of this approach at this stage of development were such as to justify the eclipse of the IC approach in these years in favor of improving steam engine designs instead. Certainly any claims that it was at that stage "safer, cleaner, and more efficient" seem dubious. Eventually of course IC engines could justify the latter claim, when compression ratios and cleaning up the general process allowed the higher temperatures of combustion in the cylinder versus the lower temperatures allowable in even highly developed steam engines to prevail. As for safety and cleanliness--I do think a good steam engine could stay ahead of an IC at any state of the art in these respects.

Historically IC engines have two advantages over steam--greater attainable efficiency, and a potentially much lighter overall system weight, which is crucial for applications to motive power of boats, land vehicles and above all aircraft. To this day, IC engines have not dominated in stationary power though I do believe that at one time diesel installations were major sources of power generation for commercial electric systems--since eclipsed by gas turbines. (Whether one wants to call a gas turbine system "IC" or not is sort of a personal judgement; in English as far as I've noticed we tend not to, reserving the term for compression/time-varying cycle engines, usually in cylinders but including trochoidal engines like the Wankel--a turbine being continuous in operation over time in all its parts and distributing the stages over space concurrently has a different dynamic and so is treated separately under whatever rubric).

I also note that the B/M engine as designed wanted gaseous fuel, either hydrogen or "illuminating gas;" this would also tend to focus applications on stationary plants and thus throw them into competition with steam engines on especially unfavorable terms. Only by adapting the cycle to liquid fuel of some kind, hopefully one cheaply and widely available, would the engine tend to find a niche in more mobile applications, where it would still face drawbacks compared to already-developed steam plants.

So I'm going with "the tech did not spread yet for good reasons." It would be interesting to hear strong arguments to the contrary though!
 
Fuel availability

For any new technology, infrastructure is critical--in this case, available fuel. Gaseous fuel is available, so if an engine based on gas is close to cost effective, it can possibly grow--get improved on by numerous users--and live up to its potential.

Liquid fuel is not easily accessible, and providing infrastructure to get it to engines here and there would be expensive, so there has to be a clear advantage to make it worth the investment. When the I/C engine did start to grow, there was a major advantage to it over the others, making the distribution of gasoline worthwhile. So--IMVHO, the earlier internal combustion engine needs a good, solid reason to make fuel easily available, so it needs a distinct advantage over earlier engines. If it's only a little bit more efficient, it's not cost effective, since the coal for steam is readily available, and the potential savings from an internal combustion engine are more than spent getting fuel.
 
I hope I've been clear that gaseous fuel seems wrong for motor applications, such as road vehicles or even boats/ships, because of the awkwardness of keeping fuel tanks on moving vehicles. One could compress the gas, but that would tend to negate the alleged safety advantage--no more boiler explosions, instead fuel explosions! Or liquefy it--requiring insulation, metals that can take the cold without shattering, or high pressures and again a danger of sudden explosion, not to mention the challenges involved in compressing a flammable fuel in the first place.

For stationary applications, in the mid-19th century fuel gas for gas lighting was common, often synthesized from coal ("town gas"--you blast carbon in some form with live steam, and get a mix of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, both components burn nicely). So insofar as the new engine type can compete with a steam engine as a stationary plant, it can use the gas readily available.

But of course a steam engine can just burn the same gas, or any number of other fuels, many of which were also pretty available.

I'm skeptical the B/M design could be competitive with existing mid-19th century steam engines because of the description of the cycle which suggests that most of the power comes from atmospheric pressure pushing down on the piston rather than mainly coming from the expansion of the cylinder under positive pressure from the ignited gas. That seems analogous to the earliest forms of practical steam engine which similarly relied mainly on vacuum and used steam pressure mainly to expand the cylinder, without getting much power from that stroke. So it seems unlikely that the combustion temperature was all that high, probably lower than prevailing in high-performance steam engines of the day, nor that what energy is thermodynamically available is being harnessed very efficiently. Given other typical drawbacks of even well-developed IC engines--a bit more tempermental than steam piston engines, difficulty starting, a tendency to only be efficient at a certain RPM and power output--it seems the main advantages over a steam setup would be that it might possibly be somewhat lighter (no big deal for fixed installations) conceivably somewhat safer (or not!) and might possibly start up faster (but with some hassle and uncertainty). With development the IC will pull ahead of the steam engine, but one doubts that potential was clear with this engine.
 
OK, so the Barsanti-Matteucci engine doesn't become the 'default' ICE used throughout Europe - but surely jumped-starting the technology roughly a decade is going to have large butterfly effects. Otto's original designs IOTL weren't exactly efficient or competitive either, and yet rather quickly ICE over took coal engines in several roles. I thought the obvious implication would be someone would further refine the B/M-B model and things would follow a natural course from there. That appears to be how every other technological breakthrough works at least :p
 
But would anyone see anything in it that would inspire work on it?
What's the power of these early engines? Major cities in Europe and America were experimenting with elevated and underground railways at this time (Wikipedia informs be that the London Underground opened in 1863), and that work spurred on interest in smaller and preferably smokeless locomotives. Could these engines work on an underground locomotive?

There's also the possibility of yachts, but I've no idea what the strength of these engines were.
 
What's the power of these early engines? Major cities in Europe and America were experimenting with elevated and underground railways at this time (Wikipedia informs be that the London Underground opened in 1863), and that work spurred on interest in smaller and preferably smokeless locomotives. Could these engines work on an underground locomotive?

There's also the possibility of yachts, but I've no idea what the strength of these engines were.

Five HP is mentioned. And the London Underground is definitely somewhere an alternative to smoky steam would be preferred, particularly as fireless engines are...well...

http://www.aqpl43.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/fowler/fowler.htm

Among other experiments, but this is telling. A practical internal combustion engine would be snapped up eagerly, but it doesn't sound like this design looks promising enough to be used right away.

I can't help but hope that if this what if happens that it kills enthusiasm by promising much and turning out useless so that steam engines endure.

It might not - at best (from that perspective) it would just be forgotten - but I can hope.
 
Whe had a big discussion here several years ago about the 1820's 2 cycle ICE, someone [midwest] invented to use on his Ferry.
Seems I recall a Aborted TL also.
 
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