The golden age of steam Steam on the rails At about the same time as Trevithick and Evans unveiled their steam-driven vehicles railroad pioneers such as George Stephenson were building the first steam rail locomotives Steam on the rails progressed faster than steam on the roads By 1830 Britain had the world’s first steam railroad By the 1850s railroads were spreading across Europe and the United States Most people were thrilled by this new and fast way to travel To the surprise of some doctors train passengers did not collapse or die when speeding along faster than a horse Go slow on the roads It was a different story on the roads In Britain in the 1830s Walter Hancock started a steam bus service in London Gurney’s steam coach Sir Goldsworthy Gurney’s 1829 steam coach could carry 21 people and ran at 12 mph 19 km h It had six wheels the front two were for steering The metal boiler contained metal tubes filled with water A firebox burning wood or coal heated the water to steam and steam pressure drove two pistons in cylinders The piston motion was linked by rods and cranks to the back wheels of the coach This is Gurney’s steam coach on the road The drivers often found their way blocked by stones or trees put there by people eager to keep newfangled steam engines off the highways 10
High-pressure steam enters Valve rod directs steam to drive piston How steam engines work In a double-acting steam engine high-pressure steam drives a piston up and down inside a cylinder The cylinder motion is linked through a connecting rod and crank to turn the wheels The crank action moves rods to open valves which open and close to release used and fresh steam As steam enters the cylinder the piston is pushed one way then as more steam is let in through the inlet valve it pushes the piston back up inside the cylinder for the cycle to start again Piston is pushed forward by steam driving the connecting rod High-pressure steam and crank drive piston back Valve rod opens and closes valves Connecting rod Cylinder Crank and Sir Goldsworthy Gurney ran an intercity steam coach service but neither enterprise lasted long Problems with steam Steam trains were fast and efficient but they ran on timetables and they didn’t always take you where you wanted to go It was impossible to build railroads that linked to every street in every town and village but steam coaches and buses could go anywhere there was a road There were problems though Steam engines were big heavy and dirty They spat out steam and puffed out smoke and cinders They also needed a lot of water and coal to keep going and if the boiler ran dry it blew up The steamers scared horses and pedestrians so much that an 1865 law in Britain set a speed limit of 3 7 mph 6 km h and half that in towns for steam road engines Also a man with a red warning flag or a red lamp at night had to walk in front Interest in steam on the road fizzled out and while Britain led the world on rails its roads still belonged to the horse It was up to inventors and engineers in Europe and the United States to find alternatives to steam Breakthrough Steam engine technology progressed though road vehicles didn’t take off in the same way as trains Steam vehicles used a linkage system to transmit piston energy to the wheels This link technology endured while people searched for a better fuel 11
Gas engines From steam to gas Engineers started to look at the possibility of a gas engine as an alternative to steam Interest in gas increased after the first use of gaslights from burning coal gas in homes and streets in the late 1700s With gas the combustion burning could happen inside the working parts not outside as in the steam engine The combustion or explosion would drive a piston in a cylinder The internal combustion engine In 1794 Robert Street in Britain made a gas engine He sprinkled petroleum spirits liquid petroleum oil into a cylinder and heated it until the spirits evaporated became a gas As the gas warmed it expanded and pushed up the piston The rising piston opened a valve to let in air to mix with the gas A flame was sucked in to ignite the mixture The explosion pushed the piston down again This was the first internal combustion engine By the 1820s other inventors had sketched out ideas for gas engines Some used hydrogen Others tried coal gas Promising experiments Gas engineers used the basic parts of a steam engine piston cylinder valves and linkage cranks and rods Their ideas were sketchy often just drawings but they contained the seeds of a new power system Some even built gas cars though few people saw or heard about their experiments In 1807 Swiss engineer François Isaac de Rivaz made a hydrogen-oxygen engine that Étienne Lenoir Date of birth January 12 1822 Place of birth Mussy-la-Ville Belgium Greatest achievement He made the first practical internal combustion gas engine He sold several hundred engines and some were still working after 20 years Interesting fact Lenoir also made a motorboat and an electric brake for trains Date of death August 4 1900 12
Two-stroke internal combustion engine This illustration shows how a modern two-stroke engine works The basic cycle is the same as in the first gas engines made in the 1800s by Street and Lenoir Upstroke Downstroke Fuel is compressed and ignited by the spark plug Piston Fuel and air mixture is drawn in Valve is open Ignition burning forces piston down Fuel mixture is forced into cylinder Crankcase Valve is closed Burned fuel is pushed out by compressed fuel mixture drove a small trolley In Britain Samuel Brown made a gas carriage in 1820 and drove it on the London-to-Dover road while William Barnett built a gas engine in 1838 that had a two-stroke cycle This meant that it gave power for each upstroke and downstroke of the piston Lenoir’s breakthrough In 1860 Étienne Lenoir in France built a better two-stroke engine that burned coal gas It had valves to let in a gas and air mixture which was then ignited by an electric spark from an induction coil fed with current from a battery This was the first spark-ignition system It was feeble and noisy but it worked and people bought Lenoir engines for use in factories His invention pointed the way forward In 1862 Lenoir tried his engine on a cart and it traveled 5 6 miles 9 km in three hours He then heard about a brand new fuel that was about to change everything Breakthrough Lenoir’s engine was the first gas engine to work well enough for use in factories Lenoir also showed that spark ignition was possible using electricity from a storage battery if boosted by an induction coil 13
