[SEL] Sort of on-topic: The First Aircraft Engine

[Charles R Bryant]

Very interesting  topic. To add to it Charles Taylor is considered by the
F.A.A to be
the first Airframe and Engine mechanic and was issued Airframe and Engine
certificate
No.1. Each year the Department of Transportation  presents The Charles
Taylor "Master Mechanic"
Award to an aircraft mechanic who has a F.A.A.  A&P certificate (Airframe &
PowerPoint),
worked in aviation 50 years, recommended by the local F.A.A. office and
prior companies he has worked for.
This is the highest aircraft mechanics award in the nation. I was presented
this award on Feb.19,2003
while living in Missouri.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Allen" <linstrum55 at yahoo.com>
To: "Stationary Engine List" <sel at lists.stationary-engine.com>
Sent: Monday, September 05, 2005 5:58 AM
Subject: [SEL] Sort of on-topic: The First Aircraft Engine


> For a diagram and an article about the very first aircraft engine, go
> to:
>
> http://www.curtisswright.com/history/1901-1920.asp
>
> The first aircraft engine was pretty amazing for the time, but so were
> the two brothers and their machinist friend who designed and built it.
> The Wright Brothers and their bicycle shop machinist friend Charlie
> Taylor built the engine in a fairly short amount of time. The Wrights
> and Taylor had already built two engines before completing the third
> engine that was used to power their first flight, though, so they did
> have a bit of experience. The first engine had been built in 1901,
> about eighteen months before their first attempt at making a multiple
> cylinder aircraft engine. Their 1901 engine was a 4-stroke cycle single
> cylinder that had a 6-inch bore and a 7-inch stroke. It was air-cooled
> and on their Prony brake dynamometer it cranked out 3 horsepower at 447
> rpm. They built it to run the lathe, drill press, and milling machine
> in their bicycle manufacturing machine shop. Interestingly, it was
> fueled with a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, otherwise known
> as "producer gas" or "illuminating gas", a man-made utility fuel made
> by reacting steam with coal in a gas works or "gas house". This was the
> gas capable of killing a human or animal in a matter of minutes or even
> seconds if someone stuck his/her head in a cooking oven with the gas
> turned on. Since producer gas was tantamount to using deadly hydrogen
> cyanide gas as a household fuel, its use was discontinued around 85 or
> 90 years ago. Even though it hasn't been around for a long time,
> putting one's head in the oven with the gas turned on is still
> considered to be a way to commit suicide, but nowadays it is only a
> myth since methane or propane are not toxic and are only lethal when
> inhaled in concentrations high enough to displace air, which causes
> simple asphyxiation from lack of oxygen. One feature of producer gas is
> that its octane or anti-knock rating is well over 100 and its use
> avoided pre-ignition knock, a problem that plagued their aircraft
> engines because of the poor quality 60-octane equivalent petroleum
> distillate fuels available in 1903. The Wright's first four cylinder
> engine intended to power their aircraft had a "square" bore and stroke
> of 4 inches, giving it a c.i.d. of 201 cubic inches. It delivered 12
> horsepower at 1000 rpm. During testing in their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle
> shop, it seized when they adjusted the fuel mixture to be very rich to
> keep the exhaust valves cooler and in the process washed all the
> lubrication from the cylinder walls. Better for it to have seized in
> the Ohio shop where they built it instead of far off Kitty Hawk.
> Unfortunately it destroyed the aluminum block and they had to have
> another cast. Their second aircraft engine suffered a somewhat similar
> fate. Once installed in their aircraft it only ran the one single day
> of December 17, 1903 when they flew, and was destroyed when the wind
> blew the parked airplane over, smashing the heavy engine onto the
> ground and cracking its block. Altogether, the Wrights built around 200
> engines of their first design, slowly improving the parts for
> reliability and increasing the performance to 16 horsepower.
>
>
> Rich
>
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