Automobiles (Emissions)

History of Engines

In 1876, one of the most important landmarks in engine design came from Nicolaus August Otto, who invented an effective gas motor engine with the first practical four-stroke internal combustion engine. An internal combustion engine uses the explosive combustion of fuel to push a piston within a cylinder. The movement of the piston turns a crankshaft that then turns the car wheels via a chain or a drive shaft. Various types of fuel can be used for internal combustion engines, including gasoline (or petrol), diesel, and kerosene. In 1885, a German mechanical engineer, Karl Benz, designed and built the world's first practical automobile to be powered by an internal combustion engine and received the first patent for a gas-fueled car on January 29, 1886. The first commercial car manufacturers of gasoline-powered vehicles were bicycle producers Charles and Frank Duryea, who built their first motor vehicle in 1893, in Springfield, Massachusetts. However, Ransom E. Olds and his Olds Motor Vehicle Company dominated this era of automobile production and had a large-scale production line running by 1902. Within a year of this, Cadillac (formed from the Henry Ford Company) was producing cars in the thousands. By 1905 an assortment of power technologies was being used by hundreds of producers all over the Western world.

Traffic jams in Los Angeles are a common occurrence—and the reason why California made the first effort at controlling pollution from automobiles in 1961. The standards set in the 1966 Clean Air Act were similar to the standards set by California.

For decades, steam-, electricity-, and gasoline-powered autos competed for dominance, with the gasoline internal combustion engines achieving dominance around 1910. Around this same time, many modern advances were attempted, including gas/electric hybrids, multivalve engines, overhead camshafts, and four-wheel drive; some were used in that early era, while others were discarded and reappeared later. Between 1907 and 1912 in the United States, the high-wheel motor buggy gained popularity, with over 75 makers. In 1912, the Ford Model T dominated sales of the high-wheel motor buggy and was the most widely produced and available car until 1927. By the 1930s, most of the mechanical [Page 45]technology used in today's automobiles had been invented, but unfortunately, around 1930, with the beginning of the Great Depression, the number of auto manufacturers declined sharply.

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