The Evolution of the World’s Most Efficient Motor.

Two Must-Have Books for Engine Heads

Take a moment and try to imagine coming up with the principles of internal combustion all on your own. From scratch. That’s what the visionaries of 150 years back had to do. Take the glimmer of a totally alien idea and turn it into clanking, smoking, and noisy machinery. Then, figure out how to make it efficient and it pays for itself. Do it one step at a time towards a goalpost that keeps moving farther away as others work on their own flavor of similar ideas. When one fella fumbles, another fella picks up the ball and carries it farther down the field.

Johnny Cash said, “You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone.” There have been a lot of stepping stones since great thinkers began pondering the concept of internal combustion back in the 1600s. It wasn’t until the 1870s that we first saw mechanical results. All of us designing and repairing internal combustion engines are drawing on collective knowledge and experience that goes back more than 150 years. Many of us probably don’t appreciate that effort as much as we should because we may not know the details of what went into building that road of knowledge. Now you have a renewed opportunity to sightsee on that road, milepost by milepost, in two books; Internal Fire: The Internal Combustion Engine 1673-1900 and Diesel’s Engine: The Man, and the Evolution of the World’s Most Efficient Internal Combustion Motor.

Both books are by C. Lyle Cummins, Jr. and if that name is familiar, bear in mind he is a son of Clessie Cummins, the founder of Cummins Engine and a pioneer in the development of diesel technology. Born in 1930, Lyle followed in his father’s footsteps, became a mechanical engineer, and has five patents to his credit. He also spent time teaching at a school of engineering and that’s likely where he noticed the lack of comprehensive technical histories on internal combustion engines that people outside the hallowed halls of engineers could enjoy and learn from. In both books, Lyle balanced the technical with a great storytelling style and they read like Tom Clancy novels for gearheads.

Neither book is new. Internal Fire was first published in 1976. Diesel’s Engine came out in 1992. Cummins self-published them (and other books in a similar vein) after starting Carnot Press. They sold well and got great reviews but Cummins moved on to other things, including retirement, and the books were out of print for a long time. In 2021, Octane Press  https://octanepress.com/, publisher of many fine automotive titles, negotiated with Lyle to buy the books and bring them back into print.

Internal Fire covers the development of the internal combustion engine, regardless of the fuel used, including gunpowder, air (yes, hot air!), coal gas, coal dust, coal furnace gas, hydrogen, “gasoline” (various iterations of refined petroleum similar to what we now know as gasoline), other petroleum products (heavy oil of various levels of refining) and alcohol. Turning a hopper full of theories and ideas into practical applications was a monumental task and Internal Fire will take you through it in detail.

Diesel’s Engine deals with Dr. Rudolph Diesel’s quest to develop the compression-ignition engine and the legions of engineers that paralleled, or followed, to develop it into a practical application. You’ll learn a lot about the man, both his strengths and his weaknesses, and find out who were his most trusted allies or bitterest enemies. You’ll see the technological roadblocks and how a whole industry developed to remove them. If you read carefully, you will learn that the diesels of today are not really “diesels” according to the Dr. Diesel’s original concepts.

Make no mistake, you will want a clear head and a bit of caffeine in the bloodstream when you read these, but they are ultimately understandable. If you are anything like this reviewer, you will close the books with a deeper understanding of how the internal combustion engine works and a greater appreciation for the great minds that brought them to us.

SOURCE

Octane Press
octanepress.com
512-334-9441