Timeline of motor and engine technology

Timeline of motor and engine technology

(c. 30–70 AD) – Hero of Alexandria describes the first documented steam-powered device, the aeolipile.^[1]
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.^[2]
1712 – Thomas Newcomen builds a piston-and-cylinder steam-powered water pump for pumping water out of mines.^[3]
1769 – James Watt patents his first improved steam engine.^[4]

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".^[5]^[6]
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.^[7]
1860 – Lenoir 2 cycle engine^[8]
1872 – Brayton Engine
1877 – Nicolaus Otto patents a four-stroke internal combustion engine (U.S. patent 194,047).^[9]
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.^[10]
1888 – An AC induction motor is featured in a paper published by Galileo Ferraris and is patented in the U.S. by Nikola Tesla.^[11]
1892 – Rudolf Diesel patents the Diesel engine (U.S. patent 608,845).^[12]
1899 – Ferdinand Porsche creates the Lohner–Porsche, the first hybrid vehicle.

20th Century

1903 – The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices was published by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
1905 – Alfred Büchi patents the turbocharger.^[13]
1913 – René Lorin invents the ramjet.^[14]
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.^[15]^[16]
1929 – Felix Wankel patents the Wankel rotary engine (U.S. patent 2,988,008).^[17]
Late 1930s – Hans von Ohain^[18] and Frank Whittle^[19] 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.^[20]
1957 – Rambler Rebel announced Electrojector electronic fuel injection option, however no production models were offered with the option.
1964 – Ion engine invented.^[21]
1966 – RD-0410 nuclear thermal rocket engine was ground-tested.
1960s – alternators replace generators on automobile engines.^[22]
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.