TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. 669 
The first true internal-combustion engine was undoubtedly the cannon, and the 
use in it of combustible powder for giving energy to the shot is strictly analogous 
to the use of the explosive mixture of gas or oil and air as at present in use in all 
internal-combustion engines ; thus the first internal-combustion engine depended 
on the combination of a chemical discovery and a mechanical invention, the 
invention of gunpowder and the invention of the cannon. : 
In 1680 Huygens proposed to use gunpowder for obtaining motive power in 
an engine. Papin, in 1690, continued Huygens’ experiments, but without success. 
These two inventors, instead of following the method of burning the powder under 
pressure, as in the cannon, adopted, in ignorance of thermodynamic laws, an erroneous 
course. They exploded a small quantity of gunpowder ina large vessel with escape 
valves, which after the explosion caused a partial vacuum to remain in the vessel, 
This partial vacuum was then used to actuate a piston or engine and perform 
useful work. Subsequently several otherinventors worked on the same lines, but all 
of these failed on account of two causes which now are very evident to us. Firstly, 
gunpowder was then, as it still is, a very expensive form of fuel, in proportion to 
the energy liberated on explosion; secondly, the method of burning the powder to 
cause a vacuum involves the waste of nearly the whole of the available energy, 
whereas had it been burned under pressure, as in the cannon, a comparatively 
large percentage of the energy would have been converted into useful work. But 
even with this alteration, and however perfect the engine had been, the cost 
of explosives would have debarred its coming into use, except for very special 
urposes. 
: e come a century later to the first real gas-engine. Street, in 1794, proposed 
the use of vapour of turpentine in an engine on methods closely analogous to those 
successfully adopted in the Lenoir gas-engine of eighty years later, or thirty years 
ago. But Street’s engine failed from crude and faulty construction. Brown, in 
1823, tried Huygens’ vacuum method, using fuel to expand air instead of 
gunpowder, but he also failed, probably on account of the wastefulness of the 
method. 
Wright, in 1833, made a really good gas-engine, having many of the essential 
features of some of the gas-engines of the present day, such as separate gas and 
water pumps, and water-jacketed cylinder and piston. 
Barnett, in 1839, further improved on Wright’s design, and made the greatest 
advance of any worker in gas-engines. He added the fundamental improvements 
of compression of the explosive mixture before combustion, and he devised means 
of lighting the mixture under pressure, and his engine conformed closely to the 
present-day practice as regards fundamental details. No doubt Barnett’s engine, 
so perfect in principle, deserved commercial success, but either his mechanical skill 
or his financial resources were inadequate to the task, and the character of the patents 
would seem to favour this conclusion, both as regards Barnett and other workers 
at this period. Up to 1850 the workers were few, but as time went on they 
gradually increased in numbers; attention had been attracted to the subject, and 
men with greater powers and resources appear to have taken the problem in hand. 
Among these numerous workers came Lenoir, in 1860, who, adopting the inferior 
type of non-compression engine, made it a commercial success by his superior 
mechanical skill and resources. Mr. Dugald Clerk tells us: ‘The proposals of 
Brown (1823), Wright (1833), Barnett (1838), Bansanti and Matteucci (1857), show 
gradually increasing knowledge of detail and the difficulties to be overcome, all 
leading to the first practicable engine in 1866, the Lenoir.’ This stage of the 
development being reached, the names of Siemens, Beaude Roches, Otto Simon, 
Dugald Clerk, Priestman, Daimler, Dowson, Mond, and others, appear as inventors 
who have worked at and added something to perfect the internal-combustion 
engine and its fuel, and who have helped to bring it to its present state of 
perfection. 
In the history of great mechanical inventions there is perhaps no better 
example of the interdependence of the engineer, the physicist, and the chemist 
than is evinced in the perfecting of the gas-engine. The physicist and the chemist 
together determine the behaviour of the gaseous fuel, basing their theory on data 
