BEATING DR. DIESEL

A 6 HP HORNSBY OIL ENGINE

- JIM ALLEN

SPECIAL THANKS TO RAY HOOLEY AND MIKE MURPHY

Dr. Diesel’s 1898 patent on the compression ignition engine is the well-charted beginning of the engine type we now call a diesel. Missed in all that historical hoopla... when the first production diesels entered the market, they weren’t the only engines running on fuel oil. The Hornsby-Akroyd vaporizing oil engine had been in production six years at that point and tens of thousands had been sold all over the world.

Herbert Akroyd-Stuart (1864-1927) started work on his vaporizing oil engine in 1885 after accidentally setting a fire with paraffin (kerosene). Lamp-grade kerosene is not volatile, which is why it was used indoors as lamp oil, but when he spilled some into a pot of molten tin, it vaporized and was ignited by a nearby open flame. At the time, internal combustion engineers were trying to resolve fuel volatility issues, with gasoline being considered too dangerous for many applications. Fuel oil satisfied the safety aspects (which is why oil engines were often marketed as “safety engines”) but was difficult to ignite. Akroyd-Stuart’s accident had given him a simple idea for igniting fuel oil, kerosene and other less volatile petroleum products.

THE VAPORIZING OIL ENGINE DEBUTS