Timeline of motor and engine technology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Timeline of motor and engine technology
- (c. 30 - 70 AD) - Hero of Alexandria builds the first documented steam-powered device, the aeolipile.
- 1698 - Thomas Savery builds a steam-powered water pump for pumping water out of mines
- 1712 - Thomas Newcomen builds a piston-and-cylinder steam-powered water pump for pumping water out of mines
- 1769 - James Watt patents his first improved steam engine
- 1816 - Robert Stirling invented his hot air Stirling engine, and what we now call a "regenerator"
- 1821 - Michael Faraday builds an electricity-powered motor
- 1824 - Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot first publishes that the efficiency of a heat engine depends on the temperature difference between an engine and its environment.
- 1837 - First American patent for an electric motor (U.S. Patent 132)
- 1850 - The first explicit statement of the first and second law of thermodynamics, given by Rudolf Clausius
- 1877 - Nikolaus Otto patents a four-stroke internal combustion engine (U.S. Patent 194,047)
- 1888 - Nikola Tesla patents the induction motor (U.S. Patent 381,968)
- 1892 - Rudolf Diesel patents the Diesel engine (U.S. Patent 608,845)
- 1929 - Felix Wankel patents the Wankel rotary engine (U.S. Patent 2,988,008)
- 1937 - Hans von Ohain builds a gas turbine
- 1960s - alternators replace generators on automobile engines
- 1970s - electronically controlled ignition appears in automobile engines
- 1975 - Catalytic converters are first widely introduced on production automobiles in the US to comply with tightening EPA regulations on auto exhaust
- 1980s - electronically controlled ignition improved to reduce pollution
- 1980s - electronic fuel injection appears on gasoline automobile engines
- 1990s - Hybrid vehicles that run on an internal combustion engine and an electric motor charged by the previous engine to retain peak power usage.
