subject: The History Of The Internal Combustion Engine [print this page] Who invented the internal combustion engine is hotly disputed. The Dutchman Christine Huygens drew up a design for one as early as 1680, but never actually built the engine. In 1807, Francois Isaac de Rivaz of Switzerland built one, but it ran on hydrogen and oxygen and was not a success.
It was not until 1858 that a petrol powered internal combustion engine was invented and used in a vehicle; it was also the first electric spark-ignition combustion engine. It was used in a 3 -wheeled car that completed a fifty-mile road journey. The Belgian-born engineer, Jean Joseph tienne Lenoir invented and patented it, but once again, it was not a commercial success.
Many people credit Gottlieb Daimler with inventing the internal combustion engine, but his first prototype ran on gas, and was not built until 1885. In 1889, he designed and built a four-stroke engine with 2 V shaped cylinders and a two-stroke version. Wiljhelm Mayback built the first four-cylinder four-stroke engine in 1890, which was a commercial success and used in several cars.
There were plenty of people developing four-stroke internal combustion engines in the late 1800s, but the majority were used in motorbikes not cars. The most successful was the Otto Cycle Engine that was first used in a bike in 1876. It was this engine design that ended up being adapted for use in cars.
Car design was vital in finding a way to use the internal combustion engine to power transport. The person who made the biggest contribution to this quest in terms of car design was Karl Benz. His 3-wheeled car was successful from 1886 and he had a four-wheeled version on the market in 1891, by 1900, he was the biggest car manufacturer in the world.
It is impossible to attribute one person with the accolade of being the inventor of the internal combustion engine. Over the years, many people developed engines, a lot of whom had worked with each other at one point or another. In reality, they all borrowed ideas from each other and developed their engines concurrently.
