ALCOHOL 4] 
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 s0U 
manufacturers of importance, there can 
be no doubt as to the popularity of these 
machines. 
Aleohol 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 
ean 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 
erude 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 Alcohol 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 
twent\ years, 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 1894 in Leipzig, Germany, by 
Professor Hartman for the Deutschen 
Land wirtschatts-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 $39 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 o£ 
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 be 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- 
