Timeline of motor and engine technology Facts for Kids

Timeline of motor and engine technology

(c. 30–70 AD) – Hero of Alexandria describes the first documented steam-powered device, the aeolipile.
13th century – Chinese chronicles wrote about a solid-rocket motor used in warfare.
1698 – Thomas Savery builds a steam-powered water pump for pumping water out of mines.
1712 – Thomas Newcomen builds a piston-and-cylinder steam-powered water pump for pumping water out of mines.
1769 – James Watt patents his first improved steam engine.

19th Century

1806 – François Isaac de Rivaz invented a hydrogen powered engine, the first successful internal combustion engine.
1807 – Nicéphore Niépce and his brother Claude build a fluid piston internal combustion engine, the Pyréolophore and use it to power a boat up the river Saône.
1816 – Robert Stirling invented his hot air Stirling engine, and what we now call a "regenerator".
1821 – Michael Faraday builds an electricity-powered motor.
1824 – Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot first publishes that the efficiency of a heat engine depends on the temperature difference between an engine and its environment.
1837 – First American patent for an electric motor (U.S. Patent 132 ).
1850 – The first explicit statement of the first and second law of thermodynamics, given by Rudolf Clausius.
1860 – Lenoir 2 cycle engine
1872 – Brayton Engine
1877 – Nicolaus Otto patents a four-stroke internal combustion engine (U.S. Patent 194,047 ).
1882 – James Atkinson invents the Atkinson cycle engine, now common in some hybrid vehicles.
1885 – Gottlieb Daimler patents the first supercharger.
1886 – Hot-bulb engine was established by Herbert Akroyd Stuart, Gottlieb Daimler invents the Petrol engine.
1888 – An AC induction motor is featured in a paper published by Galileo Ferraris and is patented in the U.S. by Nikola Tesla.
1892 – Rudolf Diesel patents the Diesel engine (U.S. Patent 608,845 ).
1899 – Ferdinand Porsche creates the Lohner–Porsche, the first hybrid vehicle.

20th Century

First ion engine, NASA, 1964

1903 – The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices was published by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
1905 – Alfred Büchi patents the turbocharger.
1913 – René Lorin invents the ramjet.
1915 – Leonard Dyer invents a six-stroke engine, now known as the Crower six-stroke engine named after his reinventor Bruce Crower.
1926 – Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket.
1929 – Felix Wankel patents the Wankel rotary engine (U.S. Patent 2,988,008 ).
Late 1930s – Hans von Ohain and Frank Whittle separately build pioneering gas turbine engines intended for aircraft propulsion, leading to the pioneering turbojet powered flights in 1939 Germany and 1941 England.
1939 – The BMW company's BMW 801 aviation radial engine pioneers the use of an early form of an engine control unit, the Kommandogerät.
1940s – Ralph Miller patents his Miller cycle engine.
1954 – Felix Wankel creates the first working Wankel engine.
1957 – Rambler Rebel announced Electrojector electronic fuel injection option, however no production models were offered with the option.
1964 – Ion engine invented.
1966 – RD-0410 nuclear thermal rocket engine was ground-tested.
1960s – alternators replace generators on automobile engines.
1970s – electronically controlled ignition appears in automobile engines.
1975 – Catalytic converters are first widely introduced on production automobiles in the US to comply with tightening EPA regulations on auto exhaust.
1980s – electronically controlled ignition improved to reduce pollution.
1980s – electronic fuel injection appears on gasoline automobile engines.
1989 – The Bajulaz Six-Stroke Engine was invented by the Bajulaz S A company, based in Geneva, Switzerland; it has U.S. Patent 4,809,511 and U.S. Patent 4,513,568 .
1990s – Hybrid vehicles that run on an internal combustion engine (ICE) and an electric motor charged by regenerative braking.

Timeline of motor and engine technology facts for kids

19th Century

20th Century

See also