U n I t 5

Text: The Birth of the Gas Engine.

Grammar: Sequence of Tenses

Indirect Speech

Vocabulary

Method of transmitting piston motion	– метод передачи движения поршня
Crankshaft	– коленчатый вал
Slide valve	– золотник
Ruhmkorff coil	– индукционная катушка
Machine tool	– станок
Sparking plug	– свеча зажигания
(embryonic) distributor	– (незрелый) распределитель
Crucial	– решающий
Induction	– впрыск (впуск)
Explosion	– зажигание
Expansion	– расширение
Compression	– сжатие
To request	– просить (о чем-либо)
Vapour	– пар
Emanating	– выпуск
Hydrocarbon	– углеводород
four-stroke combustion cycle	– четырехтактный цикл сгорания

Read and translate the text and then do the following exercises.

Text

The Birth of the Gas Engine

Thus it is that the gas engine produced by another inventor, Etienne Lenoir of Luxembourg, went down in history as the first example of its kind, even though it was built in I860, four years later than the Italian engine.

There was little actual difference between the two engines; both used the explosion of a mixture of gas and air inside a cylinder without previously compressing it. Lenoir's engine used a different method of transmitting piston motion to the crankshaft and the mixture, which was introduced by means of slide valve gear, was electrically ignited by a Ruhmkorff coil. There has been much discussion about the relative efficiency of these two motors, certainly the French one had much more commercial success.

It was mainly used for the mechanisation of machine tools in workshops. But it would appear that, in 1862 or 1863, such an engine was installed in a wheeled vehicle – at least according to the memoirs of Lenoir himself – who stated that the vehicle, equipped with a sparking plug and an embryonic distributor, had performed the journey a number of times between Paris and Jonville-le-Pont, a distance of over 11 miles. The complete absence from the press reports of the time of any reference to the public appearance of such an unusual vehicle must, however, give rise to some doubt. In any case, it is certain that the years around I860 are of crucial importance in the story of the motorcar. The internal combustion engine was born.

The year 1860 is a very important one in the history of the motor car; in that year the French civil engineer, Alphonse Beau de Rochas, described the 'four-stroke combustion cycle', the principle on which almost all future internal combustion engines would function. As we have seen, Lenoir's engine exploited the kinetic effects of the mixture's explosion in a three stroke cycle: induction, explosion, expansion. Beau de Rochas added the fourth phase, that of compression, which held the key to the development of the power of the internal combustion engine.

In this same period, Nikolaus August Otto, of Cologne, began to take an interest in the problems of the internal combustion engine based on the studies of Lenoir. After a series of experiments conducted in collaboration with his brother, Wilhelm, he requested a patent from the Prussian government, in 1861, for the use of a ‘mixture of gas contained in the cylinder of an engine ignited by an electric spark’, making it clear 'that this does not concern a combination of gas and air, but of vapour emanating from a hydrocarbon and from liquids'.