Lenoir gas engine
Motor de combustión interna de gas (Lenoir)
- Date
- 1860 · confidence high
- Place
- Paris, France
- Credited to
- Étienne Lenoir
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
The first commercial internal combustion engine, double-acting and without compression, fuelled by coal gas with electric ignition. Inefficient, but it demonstrated that internal combustion could drive workshops and vehicles (the Hippomobile, 1863).
Experimental precedents from De Rivaz (1807) and Barsanti-Matteucci (Florence, 1853-1854); Lenoir was the first to sell engines commercially (around 500 units).
What it led to
- The four-stroke Otto engine (1876) and the petrol engine
- Small-scale motorised industry without a steam boiler
- The automobile (Daimler, Benz)