A hot air engine was based on a device by which English engineer and aeronautical legend?
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Hot air engine A hot air engine (historically called an air engine or caloric engine) is any heat engine that uses the expansion and contraction of air under the influence of a temperature change to convert thermal energy into mechanical work. These engines may be based on a number of thermodynamic cycles encompassing both open cycle devices such as those of Sir George Cayley and John Ericsson and the closed cycle engine of Robert Stirling. Hot air engines are distinct from the better known internal combustion based engine and steam engine.
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George Cayley Sir George Cayley, 6th Baronet (27 December 1773 – 15 December 1857) was a prolific English engineer and is one of the most important people in the history of aeronautics. Many consider him to be the first true scientific aerial investigator and the first person to understand the underlying principles and forces of flight.
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Frank Barnwell Captain Frank Sowter Barnwell OBE AFC FRAeS BSc (1880 – 2 August 1938) was a British aeronautical engineer. With his elder brother Harold he built the first successful powered aircraft made in Scotland and later went on to a career as an aircraft designer with the Bristol Aeroplane Company, designing aircraft such as the Bristol Fighter, the Bulldog and the Blenheim.
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Christopher Cockerell Sir Christopher Sydney Cockerell CBE RDI FRS (4 June 1910 – 1 June 1999) was an English engineer, best known as the inventor of the hovercraft.
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Frederick Beaumont Frederick Edward Blackett Beaumont (22 October 1833 – 20 August 1899) was an English-born British officer of the Royal Engineers who produced several inventions, including a tunneling machine which bore his name, and the Beaumont–Adams revolver.
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Alex Moulton Alexander Eric ("Alex") Moulton CBE, FREng (9 April 1920 – 9 December 2012) was an English engineer and inventor, specialising in suspension design.
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Steam turbine A steam turbine is a device that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work on a rotating output shaft. Its modern manifestation was invented by Sir Charles Parsons in 1884.
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Grazebrook beam engine The Grazebrook Engine is an 1817 beam engine that was used for blowing air over the hot coals of a blast furnace to increase the heat. It is now found as sentinel sculpture on the Dartmouth Circus roundabout at the entrance of the A38(M) in Birmingham, England. It is believed to be the largest steam engine used in Birmingham.
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Rob Kell John Robert ("Rob") Kell, CBE (1902–1983) was an English civil engineer with particular expertise in the field of heating, ventilation and air conditioning.
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James Wimshurst James Wimshurst (13 April 1832 – 3 January 1903) was an English inventor, engineer and shipwright. Though Wimshurst did not patent his machines and the various improvements that he made to them, his refinements to the electrostatic generator led to its becoming widely known as the Wimshurst machine.
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Hot-tube ignitor A hot-tube ignitor was an early device that fit onto the cylinder head of an internal-combustion engine, used to ignite the compressed fuel/air mixture by means of a flame heating part of the tube red-hot. A hot-tube ignitor consisted of a metal or porcelain tube, closed at one end and attached to the cylinder head at the other and an adjustable burner that could be moved to position its flame at any point along the length of the tube.
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Lap Engine The Lap Engine is a beam engine designed by James Watt, built by Boulton and Watt in 1788. It is now preserved at the Science Museum, London.
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Aerial steam carriage The aerial steam carriage, also named Ariel, was a flying machine patented in 1842 that was supposed to carry passengers into the air. It was, in practice, incapable of flight since it had insufficient power from its heavy steam engine to fly. A more successful model was built in 1848 which was able to fly for small distances within a hangar. The aerial steam carriage was significant because it was a transition from glider experimentation to powered flight experimentation.
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Birdsill Holly Birdsill Holly Jr. (8 November 1820 – 27 April 1894) was a mechanical engineer and inventor of water hydraulics devices. He is noted for his inventions related to city water system equipment and apparatus for fire protection, like the fire hydrant.
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William Hawthorne Sir William Rede Hawthorne CBE, FRS, FREng, FIMECHE, FRAES, (22 May 1913 – 16 September 2011) was a British professor of engineering who worked on the development of the jet engine.
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Thomas Dover Thomas Dover, M.D. (1660–1742), sometimes referred to as "Doctor Quicksilver", was an English physician. He is remembered for his common cold and fever medicine Dover's powder, his work with the poor in Bristol, and his privateering voyage alongside William Dampier and Woodes Rogers that rescued castaway Alexander Selkirk, the real-life inspiration for Robinson Crusoe.
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ABC Mosquito The ABC Mosquito was a 120 hp (90 kW) six-cylinder radial aero engine designed by the noted British engineer Granville Bradshaw for use in light aircraft. The single Mosquito engine was built by ABC Motors, first running in 1916. It is thought that the design resulted from a bet between Harry Hawker and Bradshaw, Hawker proposing that Bradshaw could not build and fly a six-cylinder radial engine. The Mosquito used copper-plated steel Gnat cylinders. The engine was not a success.
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Ralph Hart Tweddell Ralph Hart Tweddell (25 May 1843 – 3 September 1895) was a British mechanical engineer, known particularly for inventing the portable hydraulic riveter, which greatly facilitated the construction of boilers, bridges and ships.
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The Engine The Engine is a fictional device described in "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift in 1726. It is possibly the earliest known reference to a device in any way resembling a modern computer. It is a device that generates permutations of word sets. It is found at the Academy of Projectors in Lagado and is described thus by Swift:
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Hyde Clarke Henry Harcourt Hyde Clarke, known as Hyde Clarke, (14 December 1815 – 1 March 1895) was an English engineer, philologist and author.
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Léon Levavasseur Léon Levavasseur (8 January 1863 – 26 February 1922) was a French powerplant engineer, aircraft designer and inventor. His innovations included the V8 engine, direct fuel injection, and evaporative engine cooling. Primarily associated with the Antoinette company, he continued to experiment with aircraft design after the company went bankrupt.
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Two-stroke diesel engine A two-stroke diesel engine is a diesel engine that works in two strokes. A diesel engine is an internal combustion engine that operates using the Diesel cycle. Invented in 1892 by German engineer Rudolf Diesel, it was based on the hot-bulb engine design and patented on February 23, 1893. During the period of 1900 to 1930, four-stroke diesel engines enjoyed a relative dominance in practical diesel applications. Charles F. Kettering and colleagues, working at the various incarnations of Electro-Motive and at the General Motors Research Corporation during the 1930s, advanced the art and science of two-stroke diesel technology to yield engines with much higher power-to-weight ratios than the two-stroke diesels of old. This work was instrumental in bringing about the dieselisation of railroads in the 1940s and 1950s.