ALCOHOL 



41 



not available and it is impossible to se- 

 cure them because of the unwillingness 

 of manufacturers to tell their business; 

 but when a single manufacturer (as is the 

 case) is selling 425 per day, and there 

 are in the United States alone some 300 

 manufacturers of importance, there can 

 be no doubt as to the popularity of these 

 machines. 



Alcohol at a price unknown now be- 

 comes available for use in engines, whose 

 peculiarities are not fully known and 

 whose ability to transform heat into 

 work is correspondingly in question. If 

 the alcohol engine can be shown to have 

 an efficiency as high or higher than other 

 liquid-fuel engines and be similar in type 

 and characteristics, it can do all that they 

 can do. and its field will be the same as 

 their field in spite of fuel costs; but by 

 field is meant the nature of the work 

 rather than the geographical location. It 

 is likely that the alcohol engine will find 

 as favorable a geographical location as 

 the natural-gas engine and the oil engine 

 have near the source of supply and far 

 from the source of competing supply. But 

 should it appear that the alcohol engine 

 can do more or better work than its oil 

 or gasoline competitors, its field will be 

 wider. In any case the position which 

 the alcohol engine may take today is no 

 criterion as to its future, because it will 

 operate on a source of energy or fuel 

 supply which, as pointed out, is inex- 

 haustible, whereas the supply of both 

 crude oil and its distillates may ulti- 

 mately become exhausted. 



The determination, then, of the position 

 of the alcohol engine today involves a 

 forecast of the future, and should it be 

 shown to be able to compete now it must 

 inevitably reach a stronger and more im- 

 portant industrial position as time goes 

 on. This is the fact that has led govern- 

 ments to take up the question, and among 

 them the United States is the latest. 



First Use of Alcoliol Engines 



About the year 1876 there was placed on 

 the American market the first successful 

 internal-combustion engine using petro- 

 leum distillate. This engine was invented 

 by George Brayton. Following the at- 



tempt of Brayton to use petroleum distil- 

 late came a series of inventions improving 

 this class of engine, lasting for about 

 twenty j-ears, when the modern forms of 

 kerosene, gasoline, and crude-oil engines 

 may be said to have been developed. Dur- 

 ing this time the subject of alcohol as 

 fuel in engines seems to have been either 

 not thought of at all or not given any 

 attention. The first serious attempt to ex- 

 amine into the possibility of alcohol as 

 a fuel in competition with petroleum and 

 its distillates seems to have been made 

 in the year 1S94 in Leipzig, Germany, by 

 Professor Hartman for the Deutschen 

 Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft. The en- 

 gine used was built by Grobb, of Leipzig, 

 to operate on kerosene, and used 425 

 grams of kerosene per hour per brake 

 horsepower, which is equivalent to 0.935 

 pound, or 1.1 pints, approximately. This 

 indicates for the kerosene a thermal ef- 

 ficiency of 13.6 per cent. When operating 

 on alcohol the engine used about twice 

 as much, or 839 grams, which with this 

 kind of alcohol was equivalent to a ther- 

 mal efficiency of 12.2 per cent or a little 

 less than with kerosene. This experi- 

 ment would seem to indicate that, com- 

 pared with kerosene, alcohol, as a fuel, 

 offered very little chance for successful 

 competition. In spite of this, however, 

 very vigorous efforts were made to devel- 

 op an alcohol engine that would be better 

 than this one, and thus was inaugurated 

 a remarkable series of experiments, con- 

 gresses and exhibitions with the one end 

 in view— of stimulating the production of 

 the best possible alcohol motor. 



The first stimulus was given by the 

 German alcohol distillers, who sought to 

 enlarge their market. They succeeded in 

 interesting the German government in the 

 question by enlarging on the national sig- 

 nificance of having available a source of 

 fuel for power, inexhaustible in quantity, 

 to he produced within the national do- 

 main from the yearly crops. Under the 

 double stimulus of government assistance 

 and the desire of the distillers to increase 

 their output, inventors and manufacturers 

 were induced to spend their time and 

 money with a resulting decided improve- 



