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

[ED]

I sure did Rick. I spent a lot of time with it.

Ed
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rick Rowlands" <jrrowlands at neo.rr.com>
To: "The SEL email discussion list" <sel at lists.stationary-engine.com>
Sent: Monday, September 05, 2005 8:34 PM
Subject: Re: [SEL] Sort of on-topic: The First Aircraft Engine


> Cic you happen to see the giant C&G Cooper Corliss engine while you were
> there?
>
> Rick
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "ED" <edstoller at earthlink.net>
> To: "The SEL email discussion list" <sel at lists.stationary-engine.com>
> Sent: Monday, September 05, 2005 8:22 PM
> Subject: Re: [SEL] Sort of on-topic: The First Aircraft Engine
>
>
> > Nice post Rich.
> >
> > Some find there way down to Dayton Ohio from the Portland Indiana show.
> > Besides the Air Force Museum, there is a National Park Service,
Historical
> > Site which has a lot on the Wright Brothers , Charles Kettering (
> > Ignitions)
> > and DELCO ( generators). It is located at Carillon Park,  www.
> > carillonpark.org
> >
> > Ed Stoller
> > New Fairfield, CT
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----- 
> > From: "Richard Allen" <linstrum55 at yahoo.com>
> > To: "Stationary Engine List" <sel at lists.stationary-engine.com>
> > Sent: Monday, September 05, 2005 6:58 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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> >>
> >
> >
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