 Requirements
No invention is possible without fundamental principles. Most inventions merely advance the technology a little further. For example, the internal combustion engine is related to the steam
engine. The piston, connecting rod, crankshaft, and crosshead (1) are therefore already familiar. Transferring a back and forth movement (translation) into a rotary movement (rotation), the
problem is already solved.
For anyone who has been casting bells since the middle of the century, building engine blocks isn't an insurmountable challenge, even if initially only for one or two cylinders at most.
Four-cylinder engines are initially assembled from two two-cylinder engines. Things get more difficult with cavities, but the first cylinder heads are still relatively simple and the engine control is
realized with add-on parts.
Fortunately, gray cast iron has good sliding properties. However, sealing the combustion chamber is not that easy. After all, the invention of the sprung piston ring (Ramsbottom ring) dates
back to the middle of the 20th century. As you can see, none of this was originally intended for the internal combustion engine, but after all was later used by it.
We have not yet talked about forging, which is so important in vehicle construction because it combines stability with lower weight. While we consider cold-forming metals a more modern
technique, forge fires and precise hammer blows have a tradition dating back hundreds of years.
What problems do the first engines actually have? It's the durability, the guarantee of starting and arriving with the new engine. Only a little later, given the early start of racing, will the
performance of the engines play a role. It's probably not entirely coincidental that the first comparison runs are almost exclusively tests of endurance.
For example, the emerging pneumatic tires let down competitors far more often than the engines. But when one talks about a lack of durability, one primarily refers to the ignition. Basically,
there is, on the one hand, the more or less open flame, which is connected to the mixture in the combustion chamber via a glow tube, or, on the other hand, the electrical solution to the
ignition problem.
kfz-tech.de/PVe33
To cut a long story short, the latter has prevailed. Daimler and Maybach are actually making Otto's flame ignition system worse. The flame's access to the mixture is still controlled by an
opening, while Daimler releases the glowing pipe onto the mixture in an uncontrolled manner, as if ignition timing were not necessary for a gasoline combustion engine.
Certainly, he knows what he's doing. The glow-tube ignition is the price to pay for the much higher engine speed. Benz, on the other hand, installed the electric buzzer ignition in his four-stroke
engine, although its speed was also lower. If you want to appreciate what Bosch achieved, first with his low-voltage and then with his high-voltage ignition, consider the numerous modifications
that were subsequently made to vehicle engines at that time.
Ignition and mixture formation seem to be closely linked in a gasoline engine. While the former ensures reliable ignition, the latter enjoys the attention of developers. If you take a look at a
carburetor (pictured below) from Otto's time that deserves its name, you'll see that it has dimensions that are comparable to a full four-cylinder engine, not in shape, but in volume.
Gasification was still carried out in a circulating stream of hot water. Later, smaller devices still bore the name but atomized the gasoline. Maybach invented the so-called spray-nozzle
carburetor, which used negative pressure to draw in a calibrated amount of fuel through a variable nozzle. A float chamber with a regulated level was already present.
It's astonishing what was already available at the turn of the century. This also applies to coolant, which back then still truly deserved its name 'cooling water'. Sometimes it was fetched from
rivers during long journeys, which is why having a bucket on board was very helpful. After all, an engine needed ten times as much water as fuel. It was only later that a circulation system was
created, which was even operated without a pump (heat circulation) for a long time.
The pipes were then surrounded by heat-conducting plates, ultimately merging into Maybach's so-called honeycomb radiator.Its unique feature was that instead of pipes carrying water
through the air, air was carried through the water in hexagonal pipes. Only now can the performance race begin, in the first two decades rather through an 'explosion' of displacement.
| 
