The first internal combustion engines did not have compression, but ran on what air/fuel mixture could be sucked or blown in during the first part of the intake stroke. The most significant distinction between modern internal combustion engines and the early designs is the use of compression and in particular of in-cylinder compression.

· 1509: Leonardo da Vinci described a compression-less engine. (His description may not imply that the idea was original with him or that it was actually built.)

· 1673: Christian Huygens described a compression-less engine.

· 1780's: Alessandro Volta built a toy electric pistol in which an electric spark exploded a mixture of air and hydrogen, firing a cork from the end of the gun.

· 17th century: English inventor Sir Samuel Morland used gunpowder to drive water pumps.

· 1794:Robert Street built a compression-less engine whose principle of operation would dominate for nearly a century.

· 1823: Samuel Brown patented the first internal combustion engine to be applied industrially. It was compression-less and based on what Hardenberg calls the "Leonardo cycle," which, as this name implies, was already out of date at that time. Just as today, early major funding, in an area where standards had not yet been established, went to the best showmen sooner than to the best workers.

· 1824: Sadi Carnot established the thermodynamic theory of idealized heat engines in France in 1824. This scientifically established the need for compression to increase the difference between the upper and lower working temperatures, but it is not clear that engine designers were aware of this before compression was already commonly used. It may have misled designers who tried to emulate the Carnot cycle in ways that were not useful.

· 1826 April 1: The American Samuel Morey received a patent for a compression-less "Gas Or Vapor Engine".

· 1838: a patent was granted to William Barnet (English). This was the first recorded suggestion of in-cylinder compression. He apparently did not realize its advantages, but his cycle would have been a great advance if developed enough.

· 1854: The Italians Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci patented the first working efficient internal combustion engine in London (pt. Num. 1072) but did not get into production with it. It was similar in concept to the successful Otto Langen indirect engine, but not so well worked out in detail.

· 1860: Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir (1822 - 1900) produced a gas-fired internal combustion engine closely similar in appearance to a horizontal double-acting steam beam engine, with cylinders, pistons, connecting rods, and flywheel in which the gas essentially took the place of the steam. This was the first internal combustion engine to be produced in numbers. His first engine with compression shocked itself apart.

· 1862: Nikolaus Otto designed an indirect-acting free-piston compression-less engine whose greater efficiency won the support of Langen and then most of the market, which at that time, was mostly for small stationary engines fueled by lighting gas.

· 1870: In Vienna Siegfried Marcus put the first mobile gasoline engine on a handcart.

· 1876: Nikolaus Otto working with Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach developed a practical four-stroke cycle (Otto cycle) engine. The German courts, however, did not hold his patent to cover all in-cylinder compression engines or even the four stroke cycle, and after this decision in-cylinder compression became universal.

· 1879: Karl Benz, working independently, was granted a patent for his internal combustion engine, a reliable two-stroke gas engine, based on Nikolaus Otto's design of the four-stroke engine. Later Benz designed and built his own four-stroke engine that was used in his automobiles, which became the first automobiles in production.

· 1892: Rudolf Diesel invented the diesel engine.

· 1893 February 23: Rudolf Diesel received the patent for the diesel engine.

· 1896: Karl Benz invented the boxer engine, also known as the horizontally opposed engine, in which the corresponding pistons reach top dead centre at the same time, thus balancing each other in momentum.

· 1900: Rudolf Diesel demonstrated the diesel engine in the 1900 Exposition Universelle (World's Fair) using peanut oil.

What we find fascinating about this history is that the gasoline and diesel engines have remained relatively unchanged since the earliest part of the twentieth century - all advances have been built around the original design. And an interesting fact mentioned above is that peanut oil was used by the inventor of the Diesel Engine as a demonstration over 100 years ago which certainly makes "Bio-Fuels" less than a new idea today.

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