Timeline of heat engine technology facts for kids

A heat engine is a cool machine that turns heat into movement or power. Think of it like a car engine, which burns fuel (creating heat) to make the wheels turn. People have known about heat engines for a very long time. But they started becoming super useful in the 1600s as we learned more about how they work.

In science, a heat engine changes heat energy into mechanical work. It does this by using a hot place (like a fire) and a cold place (like the air). Heat moves from the hot place to the cold place. As it moves, some of that heat turns into useful work.

A heat pump is like a heat engine working backward. It uses power to create a difference in temperature. This timeline shows important heat engines and pumps. It also highlights big steps in how humans understood heat and energy.

Early Ideas and Ancient Inventions

People have used heat to create movement for thousands of years. From simple tools to clever toys, these early inventions showed the power of heat.

• Prehistory – The fire piston was used in parts of Asia. People used it to start fires by quickly pushing air. This made the air hot enough to ignite tinder.
• Around 450 BC – Archytas of Tarentum made a toy wooden bird. It flew using a jet of steam.
• Around 50 AD – Hero of Alexandria created the Aeolipile. This was a spinning ball powered by steam jets. It showed how steam could make things turn.
• Around 10th century – China developed early fire lances. These were spears with bamboo tubes. The tubes held gunpowder and small projectiles.
• Around 12th century – The first pictures of a gun appeared in China. It had a metal body and a tight-fitting bullet. This design helped the hot gases push the bullet forward.
• 1125 – Gerbert designed an organ. It was blown by air that was pushed out by heated water.
• 1232 – The first use of a rocket was recorded. This happened during a battle between the Chinese and Mongols.
• Around 1500 – Leonardo da Vinci built the Architonnerre. This was a cannon powered by steam.
• 1543 – Blasco de Garay showed a boat that moved without oars or sails. It used the force from a jet of steam from a large boiling pot.
• 1551 – Taqi al-Din showed a steam turbine. This machine used steam to spin a meat spit.

17th Century Breakthroughs

The 1600s brought new scientific ideas and the first real designs for piston engines.

• 1629 – Giovanni Branca showed off a steam turbine.
• 1662 – Robert Boyle published Boyle's Law. This law explains how the volume and pressure of a gas are linked. It assumes the temperature stays the same.
• 1665 – Edward Somerset built a working steam fountain.
• 1680 – Christiaan Huygens designed an engine. It would have used gunpowder to move a piston. But it was never built.
• 1690 – Denis Papin created the design for the first piston steam engine.
• 1698 – Thomas Savery built a steam-powered water pump. This pump had no piston. It was used to remove water from mines.

18th Century Innovations

The 1700s saw the first successful steam engines used in industries like mining. Scientists also started to understand gases better.

• 1707 – Denis Papin designed his second piston steam engine. He worked with Gottfried Leibniz on this.
• 1712 – Thomas Newcomen built the first successful steam-powered water pump. It was used in mines. This engine used steam to create a vacuum. The air pressure then pushed the piston.
• 1748 – William Cullen showed the first way to make things artificially cold. This was a public demonstration in Scotland.
• 1759 – John Harrison used a bimetallic strip in his clock. This strip helped the clock stay accurate. It adjusted for temperature changes.
• 1769 – James Watt patented his improved steam engine. It had a separate part to condense the steam. This made the engine twice as efficient.
• 1787 – Jacques Charles came up with Charles's law. This law describes how a gas's volume and temperature are related.
• 1791 – John Barber patented the idea for a gas turbine.
• 1799 – Richard Trevithick built the first high-pressure steam engine. This engine used the strong force of pressurized steam to move the piston.

19th Century: Engines Everywhere

The 1800s were a time of huge progress. Internal combustion engines and new ideas about how heat works changed the world.

• 1802 – Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac developed Gay-Lussac's law. It explains the link between a gas's pressure and temperature.
• 1807 – Nicéphore Niépce put his 'Pyréolophore' engine in a boat. This internal combustion engine used moss, coal dust, and resin as fuel.
• 1807 – Engineer François Isaac de Rivaz built the De Rivaz engine. It ran on hydrogen and oxygen. He used it to power a wheeled vehicle.
• 1816 – Robert Stirling invented the Stirling engine. This was a type of hot air engine.
• 1824 – Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot developed the Carnot cycle. This is a basic model for all heat engines. It gave the first ideas about the second law of thermodynamics.
• 1834 – Jacob Perkins got the first patent for a system that cools things using vapor.
• 1850s – Rudolf Clausius introduced the idea of a thermodynamic system. He also explained entropy, which is about heat energy spreading out.
• 1859 – Etienne Lenoir made the first successful internal combustion engine. It was a two-stroke engine that used gas for light.
• 1861 – Alphonse Beau de Rochas came up with the idea of the four-stroke engine. He stressed the importance of squeezing the fuel and air mixture before it ignites.
• 1861 – Nicolaus Otto patented a two-stroke internal combustion engine. He built on Lenoir's work.
• 1867 – James Clerk Maxwell imagined Maxwell's demon. This thought experiment seemed to break the second law of thermodynamics. It started the idea that information is part of heat physics.
• 1872 – The Pulsometer steam pump was patented by Charles Henry Hall. This pump had no piston and was inspired by Savery's pump.
• 1873 – Sir William Crookes invented the light mill. This device turns the heat from light directly into spinning motion.
• 1877 – Ludwig Boltzmann explained entropy in a new way. He said it was related to the number of ways gas particles could be arranged.
• 1877 – Nicolaus Otto patented a practical four-stroke internal combustion engine (U.S. Patent 194,047 ).
• 1883 – Samuel Griffin patented a six-stroke internal combustion engine.
• 1884 – Charles A. Parsons built the first modern Steam turbine.
• 1886 – Herbert Akroyd Stuart built a prototype Hot bulb engine. This engine ran on oil and was similar to the later diesel engine.
• 1887 – Lord Rayleigh talked about a thermoacoustic heat engine. This engine could turn a temperature difference into movement using sound waves.
• 1892 – Rudolf Diesel patented the Diesel engine (U.S. Patent 608,845 ). In this engine, high pressure makes the gas hot, which then ignites the fuel. He built a working engine in 1897.

20th Century: New Engines and Quantum Ideas

The 1900s brought new engine designs like jet engines and rotary engines. Scientists also started to explore how heat works at a tiny, quantum level.

• Around 1910 – The toy Drinking bird was invented. This bird bobs up and down using the evaporation and condensation of a liquid inside.
• 1909 – Heike Kamerlingh Onnes developed the idea of enthalpy. This measures the useful work you can get from a system at a constant pressure.
• 1913 – Nikola Tesla patented the Tesla turbine. It worked based on the Boundary layer effect.
• 1926 – Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fuel rocket in the US.
• 1929 – Felix Wankel patented the Wankel rotary engine (U.S. Patent 2,988,008 ).
• 1929 – Leó Szilárd imagined a Szilard engine. This heat engine could run on information alone.
• 1930 – Sir Frank Whittle patented the first design for a gas turbine for jet propulsion.
• 1933 – Georges J. Ranque invented the Vortex tube. This device separates compressed gas into hot and cold streams without moving parts.
• 1935 – Ralph H. Fowler named the 'zeroth law of thermodynamics'. This law states that if two systems are in thermal balance with a third, they are also in balance with each other.
• 1937 – Hans von Ohain built a gas turbine.
• 1940 – Bela Karlovitz patented the first magnetohydrodynamic generator. This machine can make electricity directly from a hot, moving gas.
• 1942 – R.S. Gaugler patented the idea of the Heat pipe. This device efficiently moves heat between two solid surfaces.
• 1950s – The Philips company developed the Stirling Cryocooler. This machine uses the Stirling cycle to create a temperature difference from mechanical energy.
• 1957 – The first working thermionic converter was shown. It used electrons from a hot surface to create an electric current.
• 1959 – Scientists built a Three Level Maser. This worked as a quantum heat engine, getting work from two different temperature sources.
• 1962 – Scientists discovered Nitinol. This is a nickel-titanium alloy that can remember its shape based on temperature.
• 1962 – Nikolaus Rott revisited thermoacoustic engines. His work led to a working device carried on the Space Shuttle in 1992.
• 1992 – The first practical magnetohydrodynamic generators were built.
• 1996 – The Quasiturbine engine was patented. This is a rotary engine without pistons.

21st Century: Tiny Engines and New Discoveries

The 2000s have seen amazing progress, including engines that work at a very small scale using quantum physics.

• 2011 – Scientists showed a working Szilard engine. They used special microscopes and cameras to do this.
• 2011 – Michigan State University built the first wave disk engine. This internal combustion engine uses a disc-shaped shock wave generator instead of pistons.
• 2019 – A working quantum heat engine was shown. It used a tiny spin system and nuclear magnetic resonance.
• 2020 – Engineers demonstrated a nano-scale device. It can act as a heat engine or a refrigerator using quantum effects.

Learn More About Engines and Heat

Want to know more about how heat engines work or other related topics? Check out these links!

Related timelines:

• Timeline of rocket and missile technology – Rockets are a type of heat engine. They turn the heat of their exhaust gases into movement.
• History of thermodynamics
• History of the internal combustion engine
• Timeline of motor and engine technology
• Timeline of steam power
• Timeline of temperature and pressure measurement technology

For a timeline of all human technology see:

• Timeline of historic inventions