Nikolaus August Otto

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Nikolaus August Otto


Nikolaus August Otto

John Barber and Robert Street



German inventor Nikolaus August Otto (1832 - 1891) is today credited with the invention of the internal-combustion engine, but Herr Otto was really only one link in a long chain that stretched back to the drawing-room chemistry of the Georgian era and the discovery that certain gases in combination could cause a combustible mixture. As early as 1791, John Barber had patented a crude gas turbine intended to employ 'inflammable air ... for the purpose of procuring motion' while, three years later, Robert Street actually suggested using the upstroke of a piston in an upside-down cylinder to draw in a combustible gas produced from tar or turpentine, plus a flame that would explode it.

Samuel Brown's Gas and Vacuum Carriage



Then, in 1804, the Frenchman Phillipe Lebon d'Humberstein patented a double-acting two-stroke engine running on illuminating gas, with ignition by electricity. He was assassinated before he could turn his patent into reality, though. In 1814, claimed the Journal of the Franklin Institute, an inventor had given the editor a model of an 'inflammable air' engine which appeared to work with considerable power, although the first internal-combustion unit to drive a road vehicle (if we discount the Swiss Isaac de Rivaz's crude powered cart of 1805, which could only travel the width of a room) was built in 1826 by the Londoner Samuel Brown, whose 40-litre 'gas and vacuum' carriage climbed Shooters Hill in Woolwich to the satisfaction of numerous spectators.

Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci



The first major progress in the concept of the internal-combustion engine came in 1854, when the Italian inventors Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci patented a two-stroke power unit in which the explosion took place beneath a free piston which imparted motion to a working piston attached to a rack rod which, as it rose and fell, turned a gear-wheel. In 1856, such an engine was installed in a Florence railway station, while in 1860 a company was formed to exploit the invention. Around this time, a 20 hp engine was supplied to the Escher Wyss company of Zurich, while a 4 hp version was later built for the Officine Bauer Elvetica di Milano.

Nikolaus August Otto



It seems that the Barsanti/Matteucci engine was also built under licence by Cockerill of Liege, but Barsanti died in Liege in 1864 while arranging the terms of this licence, and the invention was exploited only to a minimal extent. Lenoir's non-compressing gas engine of the same period enjoyed a greater commercial success, and it was an 1860 press report of this machine that inspired Nikolaus August Otto, who was then 28 and working as a clerk in a Cologne shop, to attempt to develop an internal-combustion engine which could be used where steam power was impracticable.

Eugen Langen



Working with his brother, Wilhelm, Otto devised an internal-combustion engine working on liquid hydrocarbon fuel but, when he attempted to patent it, the Prussian Ministry of Commerce rejected the application on the grounds that the proposed engine was too similar to the Lenoir unit. Next, Otto conceived an improved version of the Barsanti and Matteucci engine; this, too, proved unpatentable. However, now Nikolaus Otto met Eugen Langen, a well-to-do engineer from Cologne, and the two men built an engine in which the gas mixture was compressed before it entered the cylinder (arguably the first crude attempt at supercharging) and ignited by a flame, while the working stroke of the engine was controlled by a flywheel.

Fritz Reuleaux



This was, however, still a crude free-piston engine, needing a great deal of headroom above the long rack rod which rose and fell vertically. Langen's friend, Fritz Reuleaux, formerly professor of Mechanical Engineering at Zurich, now took over the Mechanical Engineering chair at the Berlin Institute for Trade, and in his new capacity gave the inventors all the help and encouragement he could. When Reuleaux was seconded to the Technical Committee for Trade, which dealt with all patent applications, it was virtually a foregone conclusion that an application from Otto and Langen to patent their power unit would be favourably considered. Sure enough, the patent was granted on 21 April 1866.

The Otto cycle
A graphical representation of the pressure changes that take place during the various stages of the Otto cycle.


The Paris World Exhibition



The following year, Otto and Langen entered their machine for the Paris World Exhibition, where the ubiquitous Reuleaux was a judge of the engineering exhibits; the Otto engine was awarded the Gold Medal for its superiority to the other gas engines on display. Although two attempts to build Lenoir engines in Germany had failed through lack of demand, Otto and Langen attempted commercial production of their power unit. Little success resulted until 1872, though, when the company was reorganised as the Gas-Motoren-Fabrik Deutz, with Gottlieb Daimler as factory manager in charge of production.

The Brayton Engine



The same year, George B. Brayton, an Englishman resident in Boston, Massachusetts patented a non-compressing power unit which operated on similar principles to the Ericcson hot-air engine. The Scientific American compared the two engines in an 1876 supplement: 'The Brayton machine is a fine piece of workmanship, and in its working is smooth and equable, resembling in all respects, externally, a well-proportioned steam-engine. The Langen & Otto engine, however; looks like anything rather than it and its action is widely different. When the charge is fired beneath the piston, the latter, with the rack attached, is shot upwards with great velocity, descending slowly while in connection with the shaft, giving to it a very irregular and uncomfortable appearance, causing' a vague kind of fear that the whole piston and rod or rack might be projected from the cylinder. After a little watching of it, however, this feeling wears off, and as the sudden impulses given the piston are found to recur with perfect regularity, one begins to have confidence in it, and to believe that this, as well as the Brayton machine, is an ingenious and creditable piece of work.'

Although Daimler and Maybach had succeeded in raising their output to ninety engines a month, and some 2700 Otto & Langen engines were in use in Germany and England, it was obvious that there was little more that could be achieved with this noisy and inefficient power unit. Reuleaux sounded a warning: 'Otto must get on his hind legs and Daimler on his front legs'. The great breakthrough that was needed, however, would come from neither man: personality clashes threatened to split the company, and Daimler recommended a new chief engineer, Franz Rings, who carried on research under Otto's personal direction.

Franz Rings and Hermann Schumm



Rings abandoned the idea of developing the two-stroke free-piston engine any further, and instead turned to a concept that Otto had tried and abandoned in 1861-1862, the four-stroke cycle. On 9 May 1876, Rings drew up a four-stroke engine in his research diary, and Hermann Schumm, another Daimler protege, began building prototypes, which were finished and tested by September/October the same year. The only weak point of the design was the ignition system, in which a slide valve exposed a flame to the combustion chamber, a complex system of non-return passages obviating blow-back. Now, though, the personality clashes between Langen and Daimler became more unpleasant, resulting in Daimler's resignation in 1882.

Nikolaus Otto attempted to create a monopoly of the four-stroke cycle, thus forcing other experimenters to concentrate on the two-stroke or risk prosecution, but his plans for control of the industry were dashed. This was when his 1877 patent was overthrown after two years of litigation in 1886, on the grounds that an obscure French civil engineer named Alphonse Beau de Rochas, prematurely retired at the age of 45, had distributed 300 copies of a memorandum describing the four-stroke cycle to the Press in 1862, and had patented the concept.

Gustav Otto



Nikolaus Otto died in 1891 at the dawn of the motor age, although his company continued. They built a range of Bugatti-designed cars in 1907-1911, and later entered the field of commercial vehicles and tractors, in which the Magirus-Deutz name was to become famous; Otto's son, Gustav, designed the Otto car which was produced in 1923-1924 in Munich. It was, however, the concept of the four-stroke cycle rather than its application to a motor vehicle that earned Nikolaus August Otto his place in automotive history - in fact for many years the four-stroke cycle was alternatively referred to as the Otto cycle. And yes, there was an Otto cycle that you could ride, too. Built in the 1880s, the Otto Dicycle was a fiendish device in which the rider balanced precariously between two side-by-side wheels devoid of any steadying mechanism. BSA built the machine in Britain but, hardly surprisingly, it failed to enjoy any lasting success.

Also see: Honour Roll - Founding Fathers Of The Automotive Industry
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