Internal+Combustion+Engine

Have students research and make a working animation of an internal combustion engine.

The internal combustion engine was the core of three technological developments around the year 1900. Small boat engines in Grand Rapids, MI The automobile in Dearborn, MI The Harley-Davidson motor cycle in Milwaukee, WI The Wright Flyer in Dayton, OH

http://www.acbs.org/rudder/oldrudder/Rudder/Spring04/Kittyhawk.html

Orville Wright's Canadian Getaway and His Beautiful Boat

by Harold D. Shield photos by Bev McMullen

One hundred years ago this year a lot of very important things were happening, and many of these important developments were destined to greatly affect boating, and in one rather surprising and largely unknown way, boating in Canada. Certainly the most obvious effect of 1903 on Canada was the developing technology of the internal combustion engine. A vintage boat built in 1929 by Gidley of Penetanguishene can also be said to be a direct result of 1903 events, but let’s get the background understood before we talk about that 1929 vessel that became known as Kittyhawk.

No one person can be said to be “the” inventor of the gasoline-fueled internal combustion engine but various developments can be traced. A French engineer, J.J. Etienne Lenoir, working in 1859 managed to construct a double-acting spark ignition engine, which could be operated continuously for some time. Dr. Nicholas Otto, a Prussian, born in 1832, developed an experimental “explosive” engine in 1863, but it was not successful enough to warrant production. Later, assisted by a Cologne machinery designer named Eugen Langen, many of its problems were corrected, leading to a successful model powered by illuminating gas. By 1878, Otto had arrived at the successful principles of the four-cycle engine, “suck, squeeze, bang, and blow”, and was granted patents. One year later this engine was being sold in the United States and several other countries.

In 1885, a tiny 2-cycle engine built by the Sintz Gas Engine Co. of Grand Rapids, Michigan, was demonstrated in a small boat. It appears to have followed the design work of Dugald Clerk, a Scottish engineer who had patented a successful model in the 1870’s.

Late in the century, the Steinway Piano Co. of New York had entered the yacht-building field, and from 1891 to 1897 built a Daimler engine under license to power their cruisers.

With the expiration of the Otto and Clerk patents in 1895, a veritable explosion of new builders entered the market to provide gasoline-powered engines for agriculture, factories, automobiles and boats.

All of which brings us up to 1903, more or less, and sets the stage for three developments of that year that certainly gave the world, and particularly the boating world, alot of reasons to celebrate.

Because of the rapid development in gasoline engines, three very important events occurred in 1903, all three changing our lives in different ways. First, after two failures, Henry Ford started his third company, which was to revolutionize the production of automobiles, on its way to completely changing the world.

Secondly, two Milwaukee neighbors, Bill Harley and Arthur Davidson, had read stories of European motorized bicycles that had been fitted with a leather strap to turn the rear wheel. Their company, started in a backyard shed, became a shining example of manufacturing. Still growing a century later, Harley-Davidson has become an American icon. Their 2-cycle engine provided the impetus for Cameron Waterman and Ole Evinrude, among others, to transfer the power to the transom of a rowing boat, bringing the world to boating with outboard engines.

Third on my list of 1903 innovations was the first flight of a heavier-than-air flying machine. On December 17, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright launched the Flyer in 27-mile-per-hour winds. With Orville at the controls the flight lasted 12 seconds. Two more flights of about the same duration followed, but by noon a fourth flight lasted for 59 seconds and covered 852 feet. One important reason for their success was their design and construction of a lightweight gasoline engine, something not then available from any manufacturer.

The pioneering achievements of the Wright brothers changed the world, altering the nature of war, and then transforming civilian life. Nothing would ever be the same.

This brings us to the Canadian part of our celebration, and a story that is quite unknown to most Canadians. Depressed, worn-out, hating the limelight of celebrity, Orville was falling into a deep depression. He longed to get away from it all, to just be himself, to live unrecognized in some simple place. A lifelong friend and former teacher, Professor W.B. Worthener, provided the answer – a Canadian vacation in the unspoiled wilderness of Georgian Bay.

Professor Worthener had already vacationed in this beautiful area, planned to return himself, and could easily make arrangements with a local family to rent suitable accommodation for Orville. The Great War was underway and patriotic Canadian families were quite willing to rent their holiday homes, donating the proceeds to purchase comfort supplies for the troops. Thus, Orville Wright came to Canada’s Georgian Bay, seeking the healing effects of an escape to the wilderness. It proved to be exactly what was needed, and before returning in 1916 he purchased his own island in paradise, Lambert Island, where he was to spend summers for the next quarter-century, close to nature, far from public attention, enjoying the low-key pleasures of fishing and boating.