School model of an engine.

An engine is a machine that can convert some form of energy (obtained from a fuel) into useful mechanical power or motion. If the engine produces kinetic energy (energy of motion) from a fuel source, it is called a prime mover; if it produces kinetic energy from a preprocessed "fuel" (such as electricity, a flow of hydraulic fluid, or compressed air), it is called a motor. Thus, the main device that powers an automobile is called an engine. A locomotive is also loosely referred to as an engine.


Usage of the term "engine"

Originally, an engine was a mechanical device that converted force into motion. Military devices such as catapults, trebuchets, and battering rams were referred to as "siege engines." The term "gin" as in cotton gin is recognized as a short form of the Old French word engin, in turn from the Latin ingenium, related to ingenious. Most devices used in the Industrial Revolution were referred to as engines, and this is where the steam engine gained its name.

In more modern usage, the term "engine" is used to describe devices that perform mechanical work, follow-ons to the original steam engine. In most cases, the work is supplied by exerting a torque, which is used to operate other machinery, generate electricity, or pump water or compressed gas. In the context of propulsion systems, an air-breathing engine is one that uses atmospheric air to oxidize the fuel carried, rather than carrying an oxidizer, as in a rocket.

The term is used in computer science in "search engine," "3-D graphics game engine," "rendering engine," and "text-to-speech engine." Although these "engines" are not mechanical and perform no mechanical action, they generate useful output.

Engines in antiquity

Simple machines, such as club and oar (examples of the lever), are prehistoric. More complex engines, using human power, animal power, water power, wind power, and even steam power, date back to antiquity.

Human power was connected to the use of simple engines, such as the capstan, windlass, or treadmill, and with ropes, pulleys, and block and tackle arrangements, this power was transmitted and multiplied. These were used in cranes and aboard ships in Ancient Greece, and in mines, water pumps and siege engines in Ancient Rome. The writers of those times, including Vitruvius, Frontinus, and Pliny the Elder, treat these engines as commonplace, so their invention may be far more ancient. By the first century C.E., various breeds of cattle and horses were used for mills, with machines similar to those powered by humans in earlier times.

According to Strabo, a water-powered mill was built in Kaberia in the kingdom of Mithridates in the first century B.C.E. Use of water wheels in mills spread throughout the Roman Empire over the next few centuries. Some were quite complex, with aqueducts, dams, and sluices to maintain and channel the water, and systems of gears, or toothed-wheels made of wood with metal, used to regulate the speed of rotation. In a fourth century poem, Ausonius mentions a stone-cutting saw powered by water. Hero of Alexandria demonstrated both wind and steam-powered machines in the first century, although it is not known if these were put to any use.

Medieval engines

During the Muslim Agricultural Revolution from the seventh to thirteenth centuries, Muslim engineers developed numerous innovative industrial uses of hydropower, early industrial uses of tidal power, wind power, and fossil fuels (such as petroleum), and the earliest large factory complexes (tiraz in Arabic).[1] The industrial uses of watermills in the Islamic world date back to the seventh century, and both horizontal-wheeled and vertical-wheeled water mills were in widespread use since at least the ninth century.

A variety of industrial mills were invented in the Islamic world, including fulling mills, gristmills, hullers, paper mills, sawmills, ship mills, stamp mills, steel mills, sugar refineries, tide mills, and windmills. By the eleventh century, every province throughout the Islamic world had these industrial mills in operation, from the Middle East and Central Asia to al-Andalus and North Africa.[2]

Muslim engineers also invented crankshafts and water turbines, employed gears in mills and water-raising machines, and pioneered the use of dams as a source of water power to provide additional power to watermills and water-raising machines.[3] Such advances made it possible for many industrial tasks that were previously driven by manual labor in ancient times to be mechanized and driven by machinery to some extent in the medieval Islamic world. The transfer of these technologies to medieval Europe later laid the foundations for the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century Europe.[2]

In 1206, al-Jazari invented the crankshaft and connecting rod, and he employed them in a crank-connecting rod system for two of his water-raising machines. His invention of the crankshaft is considered one of the most important mechanical inventions after the wheel, as it transforms continuous rotary motion into a linear reciprocating motion, and is central to modern machinery such as the steam engine and the internal combustion engine.[4] In 1551, Taqi al-Din invented a practical steam turbine as a prime mover for rotating a spit. A similar steam turbine later appeared in Europe a century later, which eventually led to the steam engine and Industrial Revolution in Europe.[5]

Modern engines

Animation showing the four stages of the combustion engine cycle

English inventor Sir Samuel Morland allegedly used gunpowder to drive water pumps in the seventeenth century. For more conventional, reciprocating internal combustion engines, the fundamental theory for two-stroke engines was established by Sadi Carnot in France in 1824, and the American Samuel Morey received a patent on April 1, 1826. Sir Dugald Clark (1854–1932) designed the first two-stroke engine in 1878, and patented it in England in 1881.

Automotive production has used a range of energy-conversion systems. These include electric, steam, solar, turbine, rotary, and piston-type internal combustion engines. The gasoline (petrol) internal combustion engine, operating on a four-stroke Otto cycle, has been the most successful for automobiles, while diesel engines are used for trucks and buses.

Karl Benz was one of the leaders in the development of new engines. In 1878, he began to work on new designs. He concentrated his efforts on creating a reliable gas two-stroke engine that was more powerful, based on Nicolaus Otto's design of the four-stroke engine. Karl Benz showed his real genius, however, through his successive inventions registered while designing what would become the production standard for his two-stroke engine. Benz was granted a patent for it in 1879.

In 1896, Karl Benz was granted a patent for his design of the first engine with horizontally opposed pistons. Many BMW motorcycles use this engine type. His design created an engine in which the corresponding pistons move in horizontal cylinders and reach top dead center simultaneously, thus automatically balancing each other with respect to their individual momentums. Engines of this design are often referred to as flat engines because of their shape and lower profile. They must have an even number of cylinders and six, four, or two cylinder flat engines have all been common. The most well-known engine of this type is probably the Volkswagen Beetle engine. Engines of this type continue to be a common design principle for high-performance aero engines (for propeller-driven aircraft) and engines used by automobile producers such as Porsche and Subaru.

Continued use of the internal combustion engine for automobiles is partly due to the improvement of engine control systems (onboard computers providing engine management processes, and electronically controlled fuel injection). Forced air induction by turbocharging and supercharging have increased power outputs and efficiencies available. Similar changes have been applied to smaller diesel engines, giving them almost the same power characteristics as petrol engines. This is especially evident with the popularity of smaller diesel engine propelled cars in Europe. Larger diesel engines are still often used in trucks and heavy machinery. They do not burn as cleanly as gasoline engines, but they have far more torque.

The internal combustion engine was originally selected for the automobile due to its flexibility over a wide range of speeds. Also, the power developed for a given weight engine was reasonable; it could be produced by economical mass-production methods; and it used gasoline, a readily available fuel that was moderately priced.

A 1996 Mercedes V6 engine.



In Europe, because of economic and other restraints (such as narrower and twisty roads), the design principles leaned toward smaller cars with the higher combustion efficiency of smaller engines. This produced more economical engines with earlier four-cylinder designs rated at 40 horsepower (30 kW) and six-cylinder designs rated as low as 80 horsepower (60 kW), compared with the large volume V-8 American engines with power ratings ranging from 250 to 350 hp (190 to 260 kW).

Earlier automobile engine development produced a much larger range of engines than those in common use today. Engines have ranged from 1 to 16 cylinder designs, with corresponding differences in overall size, weight, piston displacement, and cylinder bores. Four cylinders and power ratings from 19 to 120 hp (14 to 90 kW) were followed in a majority of the models. Several three-cylinder, two-stroke-cycle models were built while most engines had straight or in-line cylinders. There were several V-type models and horizontally opposed two- and four-cylinder makes too. Overhead camshafts were frequently employed. The smaller engines were commonly air-cooled and located at the rear of the vehicle; compression ratios were relatively low.

The 1970s and 1980s saw an increased interest in improved fuel economy, leading to a return to smaller V-6 and four-cylinder layouts, with as many as five valves per cylinder to improve efficiency. The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 operates with a W16 engine, meaning that two V8-cylinder layouts are positioned next to each other to create the W shape. Thus the Veyron has the largest number of cylinders to appear in a production car.

The largest internal combustion engine ever built is the Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C, a 14-cylinder, 2-stroke turbocharged diesel engine that was designed to power the Emma Maersk, the largest container ship in the world. This engine weighs 2300 metric tons, and when running at 102 RPM produces 109,000 bhp (80,080 kW) consuming some 13.7 metric tons of fuel per hour.

Air-breathing engines

Air-breathing engines use atmospheric air to oxidize the fuel carried, rather than carrying an oxidizer, as a rocket would. Theoretically, this should provide a better specific impulse than rocket engines.

Air-breathing engines include:

  • Internal combustion engine
  • Jet engine
  • Ramjet
  • Scramjet
  • IRIS engine
  • Pulse detonation engine
  • Pulse jet
  • Liquid air cycle engine/SABRE

Environmental effects

Operation of engines typically has a negative impact upon air quality and ambient sound levels. Although, exhaust contains mostly harmless nitrogen, water vapor, and carbon dioxide; unwanted gases such as carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides make up only a small part of engine exhaust. In the case of sound levels engine operation is of greatest impact with respect to mobile sources such as automobiles and trucks. Engine noise is a particularly large component of mobile source noise for vehicles operating at lower speeds, where aerodynamic and tire noise is less significant.[6]

See also


  1. Maya Shatzmiller, Labour in the Medieval Islamic World (New York: E.J. Brill, 1994, ISBN 9004098968).
  2. 2.0 2.1 Adam Robert Lucas, "Industrial Milling in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: A Survey of the Evidence for an Industrial Revolution in Medieval Europe," Technology and Culture 46 (1): 1–30.
  3. Ahmad Y. Hassan, Transfer of Islamic Technology to the West, Part II: Transmission Of Islamic Engineering. Retrieved July 23, 2008.
  4. Ahmad Y. Hassan, The Crank-Connecting Rod System in a Continuously Rotating Machine. Retrieved July 23, 2008.
  5. Ahmad Y. Hassan, Taqi al-Din and Arabic Mechanical Engineering (Institute for the History of Arabic Science, University of Aleppo, 1976).
  6. C. Michael Hogan, Analysis of Highway Noise, Journal of Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 2 (3): 387-392. Retrieved July 23, 2008.


  • Gunston, Bill. 2006. Development of Jet and Turbine Aero Engines, 4th edition. Sparkford, UK: Haynes Pub. ISBN 978-1852606183.
  • Kirby, Richard Shelton, et al. 1990. Engineering in History. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 0486264122.
  • Landels, J.G. 1981. Engineering in the Ancient World. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 0520041275.
  • Lumley, John L. 1999. Engines: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521644895.
  • Sclater, Neil, and Nicholas P. Chironis. 2007. Mechanisms and Mechanical Devices Sourcebook. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0071467612.
  • Stone, Richard. 1999. Introduction to Internal Combustion Engines, 3rd edition. Warrendale, PA: Society of Automotive Engineers. ISBN 0768004950.

External links

All links retrieved September 22, 2013.


