The Pyréolophore () was probably the world's first

internal combustion engine An internal combustion engine (ICE or IC engine) is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal co ...

. It was invented in the early 19th century in

Chalon-sur-Saône Chalon-sur-Saône (, literally ''Chalon on Saône'') is a city in the Saône-et-Loire department in the region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in eastern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department. It is the largest city in the department; how ...

, France, by the Niépce brothers: Nicéphore (who went on to invent

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is emplo ...

) and Claude. In 1807 the brothers ran a prototype internal combustion engine, and on 20 July 1807 a patent was granted by

Napoleon Bonaparte Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader wh ...

after it had successfully powered a boat upstream on the river

Saône The Saône ( , ; frp, Sona; lat, Arar) is a river in eastern France. It is a right tributary of the Rhône, rising at Vioménil in the Vosges department and joining the Rhône in Lyon, at the southern end of the Presqu'île. The name d ...

. The Pyréolophore ran on what were believed to be "controlled

dust explosion A dust explosion is the rapid combustion of fine particles suspended in the air within an enclosed location. Dust explosions can occur where any dispersed powdered combustible material is present in high-enough concentrations in the atmosphere o ...

s" of various experimental fuels. The fuels included mixtures of

Lycopodium powder Lycopodium powder is a yellow-tan dust-like powder, consisting of the dry spores of clubmoss plants, or various fern relatives. When it is mixed with air, the spores are highly flammable and are used to create dust explosions as theatrical spec ...

(the spores of Lycopodium, or clubmoss), finely crushed coal dust, and resin. Operating independently, in 1807 the Swiss engineer

François Isaac de Rivaz François Isaac de Rivaz (Paris, December 19, 1752 – Sion, July 30, 1828) was a French-born Swiss inventor and a politician. He invented a hydrogen-powered internal combustion engine with electric ignition and described it in a French paten ...

built the de Rivaz engine, a hydrogen-powered internal combustion engine. These practical engineering projects may have followed the 1680 theoretical design of an internal combustion engine by the Dutch scientist

Christiaan Huygens Christiaan Huygens, Lord of Zeelhem, ( , , ; also spelled Huyghens; la, Hugenius; 14 April 1629 – 8 July 1695) was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor, who is regarded as one of the greatest scientists o ...

. The separate, virtually contemporaneous implementations of this design in different modes of transport means that the de Rivaz engine may be correctly described as the first use of an internal combustion engine in an automobile (1808), whilst the Pyréolophore was the first use of an internal combustion engine in a boat (1807).

Preliminary research

The Niépce brothers were living in

Nice Nice ( , ; Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative ...

when they began their project to create an engine based on the newly defined principle of hot air expanding during an explosion. The challenge was to find a way to harness the energy released in a series of explosions. In 1806 the Niépce brothers had presented a paper on their research to the French National Commission of the Academy of Science (french: Institute National de Science). The Commission's verdict was:

Proof of concept

In 1807 the brothers constructed and ran a prototype internal combustion engine, and received a patent for ten years from the Bureau of Arts and Trades (french: Bureau des Arts et Métiers) in Paris. The patent was signed by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and dated 20 July 1807, the same year that Swiss engineer

constructed and ran a hydrogen-powered internal combustion engine. It is not clear how much these practical engineering projects owe to the theoretical designs of 1680 by the Dutch scientist

. The Pyréolophore ran on controlled dust explosions of various experimental fuels, including various mixtures of finely crushed coal dust, Lycopodium powder, and resin. De Rivaz, meanwhile, was using a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. Chalon-hiver

To prove the utility of the Pyréolophore to the patent commission, the brothers installed it on a boat, which it powered upstream on the river

. The total weight was 9 quintals, about , fuel consumption was reported as "one hundred and twenty-five grains per minute" (about per minute), and the performance was 12–13 explosions per minute. The boat was propelled forward as the Pyréolophore sucked in the river water at the front and then pumped it out toward the rear. Thus, the Commissioners concluded that "the machine proposed under the name Pyreolophore by Mm. Niépce is ingenious, that it may become very interesting by its physical and economical results, and deserves the approbation of the Commission."

Operation

The operation of the Pyréolophore was first described in a meeting at the

Academy of Sciences An academy of sciences is a type of learned society or academy (as special scientific institution) dedicated to sciences that may or may not be state funded. Some state funded academies are tuned into national or royal (in case of the Unit ...

on 15 December 1806.

Lazare Carnot Lazare Nicolas Marguerite, Count Carnot (; 13 May 1753 – 2 August 1823) was a French mathematician, physicist and politician. He was known as the "Organizer of Victory" in the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars. Education and early ...

noted that "there was a bright flash of the 'spores of lycopodium' inside their sealed copper machine... The Niépce brothers, by their own device and without using water, have managed to create a commotion (explosion) in a confined space which is so strong that the effects appear to be comparable to a

steam engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be ...

or fire pump".'' The Pyréolophore operated as a series of discrete burns at a frequency of about 12 per minute to power a boat. Power was delivered in pulses, each pulse forcing water from the engine's tail pipe set under the boat and pointing toward its stern. The boat was pushed forward at each pulse by the

reactive force As described by the third of Newton's laws of motion of classical mechanics, all forces occur in pairs such that if one object exerts a force on another object, then the second object exerts an equal and opposite reaction force on the first. The th ...

of the ejected mass of water. A Pyréolophore engine consists of two principal interconnected chambers: a

firelighting Fire making, fire lighting or fire craft is the process of artificially starting a fire. It requires completing the fire triangle, usually by heating tinder above its autoignition temperature. Fire is an essential tool for human survival an ...

chamber and a

combustion Combustion, or burning, is a high-temperature exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel (the reductant) and an oxidant, usually atmospheric oxygen, that produces oxidized, often gaseous products, in a mixture termed as smoke. Combus ...

chamber. There is also a

bellows A bellows or pair of bellows is a device constructed to furnish a strong blast of air. The simplest type consists of a flexible bag comprising a pair of rigid boards with handles joined by flexible leather sides enclosing an approximately airtig ...

for injecting air, a fuel dispenser, an ignition device, and a submerged exhaust pipe. There is a means of storing energy at each explosion in order to work the mechanism as it prepares itself for the next cycle. A mechanically operated bellows injects a jet of air into the first chamber where ignition will take place. Mechanical timing lets fall a measured amount of powder fuel into the jet so that it is blown along and mixed with it. Under the control of the mechanical timing mechanism a smoldering

fuse Fuse or FUSE may refer to: Devices * Fuse (electrical), a device used in electrical systems to protect against excessive current ** Fuse (automotive), a class of fuses for vehicles * Fuse (hydraulic), a device used in hydraulic systems to protect ...

is introduced to this fuel air jet at the precise moment it passes the fuse location. The fuse then withdraws behind a metal plate. The now burning ball of powder and air travels through a wide nozzle into the main combustion chamber where a fast, almost explosive, burn takes place. The whole system now being almost airtight, a build-up of pressure follows. The pressure acts against the column of water in the exhaust pipe and expels it from the system. As the flow of exhaust gas moves into the tail pipe, it moves a loose piston in the combustion chamber which extracts and stores sufficient power to work the machine's timing mechanisms. Energy from this piston is stored by lifting weights attached to a balance wheel. The return of this wheel to its lower position under the pull of the weights governs the timing for the next cycle by operating the bellows, fuel dispenser, the fuse and valves at the correct points in the cycle. The tail pipe, being under the boat, fills with water ready for the next discharge. The fall of the timing piston also expels the exhaust gases via a pipe above the ignition chamber, which is closed off by a valve during the burn part of the cycle.

Further development

On 24 December 1807, the brothers reported to

that they had developed a new, highly flammable fuel (powder) by mixing one part resin with nine parts of crushed coal dust. In 1817 the brothers achieved another first by using a rudimentary

fuel injection Fuel injection is the introduction of fuel in an internal combustion engine, most commonly automotive engines, by the means of an injector. This article focuses on fuel injection in reciprocating piston and Wankel rotary engines. All com ...

system.The Pyreolophore at photo-museum.org
Accessed 5 July 2017 By 1817 there was insufficient progress to attract subsidy and investment, so the ten-year patent expired. Worried about losing control of the engine, Claude traveled first to Paris and then to England in an attempt to further the project. He received the patent consent of

King George III George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two kingdoms on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great B ...

on 23 December 1817. This was not the key to success. Over the next ten years, Claude remained in London, settled in Kew and descended into

delirium Delirium (also known as acute confusional state) is an organically caused decline from a previous baseline of mental function that develops over a short period of time, typically hours to days. Delirium is a syndrome encompassing disturbances ...

, whereby he squandered much of the family fortune chasing inappropriate business opportunities for the Pyréolophore. Accessed 5 July 2017 Nicéphore, meanwhile, was also occupied with the task of inventing photography. Accessed 5 July 2017

Design flaw

In 1824, after the brothers' project had lost momentum, the French physicist

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot ''Sous-lieutenant'' Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (; 1 June 1796 – 24 August 1832) was a French mechanical engineer in the French Army, military scientist and physicist, and often described as the "father of thermodynamics". He published o ...

scientifically established the

thermodynamic Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, entropy, and the physical properties of matter and radiation. The behavior of these quantities is governed by the four laws of ...

theory of idealized heat engines. This highlighted the flaw in the design of the Pyréolophore, whereby it needed a compression mechanism to increase the difference between the upper and lower working temperatures and potentially unlock sufficient power and efficiency.

Reconstruction

To celebrate the bicentenary, the Paris Photographic Institute (Spéos) and the Niépce House Museum produced a 3D animation of the working machine in 2010. Manuel Bonnet and Jean-Louis Bruley of the Maison Nicéphore Nièpce and Hadrien Duhamel of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers (ENSAM) created the video.

References

External links

Website about Niépce

Website about Niépce

3D video of the inner workings of the Pyréolophore
– by Hadrien Duhamel of École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers (ENSAM). Project supervised by Manuel Bonnet and Jean-Louis Bruley of the Maison Nicéphore Niépce. YouTube, Accessed March 2012

Gallery and archive at the Niépce House Museum

* Exhibit 0
Index of all 28 exhibits in the on-line archive
* Exhibit 1

* Exhibit 7: ttp://www.niepce.com/videos/pyreolophore/content/07_large.html Letter from Louis Charles Brunet to Claude Niépce, 29 July 1806* Exhibit 8
Letter from Louis Charles Brunet to Claude Niépce, 3 August 1806
* Exhibit 9

* Exhibit 10

* Exhibit 11: ttp://www.niepce.com/videos/pyreolophore/content/11_large.html Letter from les frères Niépce to Nompère de Champagny, Minister of the Interior, 9 November 1806* Exhibit 21
Certificate of Patent (Brevet) 1791
* Exhibit 22:

* Exhibit 23

* Exhibit 25: ttp://www.niepce.com/videos/pyreolophore/content/25_large.html Letter from Nicéphore to Claude on 26 March 1817* http://www.niepce-letters-and-documents.com * http://www.niepce-correspondance-et-papiers.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Pyreolophore Internal combustion piston engines 1807 introductions Engine technology