Étienne Lenoir

French inventor

• Born: January 12, 1822
• Birthplace: Mussy-la-Ville, Belgium
• Died: August 4, 1900
• Place of death: La Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, France

Lenoir invented a number of useful processes and devices, the most famous being an internal combustion engine. The significance of the later invention remains a matter of controversy, but there is little doubt that Lenoir’s engine stimulated the efforts of the other pioneers of internal combustion engine design.

Early Life

Although born in the French-speaking region of Belgium, Étienne Lenoir (ay-tyehn leh-nwahr) spent all of his productive life in France. He went to his adopted country at the age of sixteen in 1838 to begin work as a metal enameler. Within a few years, he had several inventions to his credit. In 1847, he patented an enameling process, in 1851 an electroforming process, in 1853 an electric-railway brake, and in 1865 an automatic telegraph that printed messages on a ribbon of paper. This telegraph was thus a forerunner of the ticker-tape machine. On January 24, 1860, he received a patent for his most famous invention—an internal combustion engine.

Interest in internal combustion engines was as old as the discovery of atmospheric pressure in the seventeenth century. Experiments and demonstrations that showed the power of atmospheric pressure working against or into a vacuum inspired a number of people to imagine an engine that could be powered by having atmospheric pressure drive a piston into a vacuum chamber. The difficulty in creating such an engine was in producing the vacuum—not once, but in rapid succession, because the piston must have continuous up-and-down motion. An obvious solution was to use gunpowder to burn the air in a chamber and to create a vacuum by allowing the resulting gas to cool. Christiaan Huygens actually constructed such engines, but they were impractical because of the incompleteness of the vacuum. The solution was the steam engine, as steam could drive the air from a chamber without an explosion and then be reduced to only one seventeen-hundredth of its original volume when converted to water.

There were suggestions for engines employing heated air rather than steam during the late eighteenth century, and some were in use by the end of the century. The real impetus for an internal combustion engine came, however, from the work of Sadi Carnot during the 1820’s. Among the ideas about thermodynamics that Carnot established was the concept of a heat engine. He demonstrated that a steam engine was basically inefficient, because little of the heat produced to power it was actually used. He believed that an air engine would be much more efficient because more heat could be utilized.

By the time Lenoir appeared in Paris, the idea of an internal combustion engine was widespread and a number had been built, but none proved practical enough to be offered commercially. In addition to the familiarity of the idea, the stage was further set for Lenoir by the ready availability of natural gas for the gas lighting that was becoming common in Paris.

Life’s Work

Lenoir’s gas engine was the first internal combustion engine practical enough to be offered for sale in significant numbers. It ran on the natural gas piped into factories and businesses for lighting purposes or distillates of petroleum similar to modern gasoline. In 1897, Lenoir claimed in France Automobile that he used the engine to power a vehicle of some sort—probably a farm cart—for several trips between Joinville-le-Pont and Paris in 1863.

The Automobile Club of France conducted an investigation in 1900 and concluded that Lenoir had made the world’s first automobile trip in May, 1862, between Paris and Vincennes. It has been observed that the discrepancy in dates is rather suspicious. These claims came at a time when there was controversy about who had invented the automobile, involving French and German inventors as well as their champions. Even if one assumes that Lenoir powered a vehicle with an internal combustion engine in 1862 or 1863, it was hardly more than a publicity stunt similar to the motorboat trips made on the Seine using his engine. He did nothing to develop a practical horseless carriage for his own use or for sale.

Although his engine was sold commercially and, in that sense, may be regarded as a success, there have been questions about the importance of his accomplishment. The most telling criticism of his work is that he did not understand the fundamental requirement for a truly successful internal combustion engine, namely that the gas must be compressed before firing. A further complaint is that he thought of his engine as nothing more than an advanced steam engine. In his patent application he stated:

My engine cannot be classed among gas engines. Indeed, the functions of the gas I employ do not consist in detonating or exploding it, thereby impelling the piston, as this has heretofore been done or suggested, but in the use of gas as a fuel that can be instantaneously and regularly ignited, and without producing any shock, for the purpose of heating the air that is mixed with it. The air thus dilated or expanded will act on the piston in the same manner as steam would in ordinary steam engines.

Despite his patent claims to have produced a gas engine unlike others, a company advertising brochure of 1864 pointed out that his engine was closely linked to those of previous inventors. It was stated that the Lenoir engine used Robert Street’s piston with Philippe Lebon’s double action, an ignition like that of Isaac de Rivas, and a cooling system similar to Samuel Brown’s. Perhaps these claims and denials, as well as the similarity in appearance of the engine to stationary steam engines, were meant to reassure a buying public dubious about the idea of gas explosions.

Whether owing to the conservative buying habits of potential customers, design inadequacies, or both, the engine was not a commercial success. Lenoir had done engineering work for Gautier and Company of Paris and apparently convinced its proprietors of the merits of his design. This company backed him in forming the Société des Moteurs Lenoir in 1859. Some four thousand shares of stock were issued in the new company but no dividends appear ever to have been paid. The Parisian Gas Company took control of the engine in 1863 and paid Lenoir a pension in his old age.

Most of the engines were built under license from Lenoir’s company. The Reading Iron Works in England built about one hundred. Two German companies built some, and the Lenoir Gas Engine Company of New York sold some at a cost of five hundred dollars for the half horsepower model and fifteen hundred dollars for the four horsepower version. The Marinoni and Lefebvre companies of Paris produced more than any of the foreign manufacturers, but, all told, fewer than five hundred were made.

The Lenoir engine resembled a stationary, double-acting, horizontal steam engine. With power being produced on each side of the piston, it was, in effect, the equivalent of a two-cylinder engine. Sliding valves connected to the crankshaft by rods that covered and uncovered ports to admit fuel and to exhaust spent fumes. The ignition system was electric. A battery provided power to an induction coil with a vibrating contact to provide a primary spark, and a sliding distributor alternated delivery of current between the two spark plugs. The electrical system was changed at least twice, as it never worked satisfactorily.

The final version used a rotary distributor with the rotor driven by the crankshaft. An unusual feature by comparison with later engines was that air and gas were admitted to the combustion chamber separately. This was the basis of Lenoir’s claim that he had not produced an ordinary gas engine. He believed that the air should remain separate from the gas, at least in part, to provide a cushion between the explosion of gas and the piston head. However, the exhaust ports opened before the expansion was complete, and much of the heat produced was lost to the cooling water, in violation of Carnot’s principles. The loss of heat also meant that there were problems with overheating and that a huge radiator was necessary. The company suggested a radiator capacity of one hundred gallons for the half horsepower model.

The engine was uneconomical for industrial applications. It consumed about one hundred cubic feet of gas per hour in the half horsepower model, and it had maintenance problems. Overheating caused the valves to stick, there was no self-contained means of recharging the batteries, and the spark plugs required frequent cleaning. Later versions of this type of engine, such as that of Pierre Hugon, provided for the injection of a spray of water into the cylinder to help in cooling, but the improvement was not enough to rescue the design. A steam engine of comparable size was as economical to operate and much less troublesome.

Carnot had observed that the most obvious way to produce a great change of temperature, as required in an efficient engine, was to compress the air used in the engine. Because compression was the key to success, Lenoir’s noncompressing engine was out of production by the late 1860’s, but he tried again during the 1880’s with a four-cycle compression engine. It had poppet valves and other advances over his earlier model, including a 300 percent improvement in fuel consumption rates. This engine was produced for a while by the Mignon and Rouart Company.

Lenoir made no substantial profits from any of his inventions, but he did receive several honors. For his engine, he received a prize at the London Exposition of 1862 and several French prizes including that of the Marquis d’Argenteuil, which brought him twelve thousand francs, in 1886. His most prestigious award was the Legion of Honor, which he received in 1881 for the invention of the teletype machine in 1865. He died in relative obscurity and poverty in 1900.

Significance

Even if Étienne Lenoir had not built an engine, his teletype machine and other inventions would have gained for him a respectable place in the story of modern technological development. It is, however, his production of the first commercial engine and, especially, his connection with the automobile that have brought him more attention than the other engine designers who were his contemporaries. He was not the first to build an internal combustion engine. In fact, by his own admission, his design depended almost entirely on the work of predecessors. Several hundred of his engines were built and sold, but, by all accounts, they were not suitable. It is on the automobile connection that his fame primarily rests.

Assessment of Lenoir’s achievements is made difficult by the controversies surrounding the invention of the automobile. As indicated, national pride and the championing of personal favorites has made this a hotly debated subject. Moreover, the difficulty in defining exactly what constitutes the first automobile probably means that there will never be a clear ranking of its inventors.

The claims and counterclaims in France and Germany as to who invented the automobile brought some attention to Lenoir at the end of his life, but it was the Selden Patent Case that did the most to bring him to the attention of the English-speaking world. George Baldwin Selden obtained a United States patent on automobiles in 1895. Although he never built any automobiles, the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers was formed to exploit the patent by selling the right to manufacture to other companies. Henry Ford challenged the patent, and in the subsequent trials, which lasted from 1903 to 1911, the Ford Company maintained that Selden’s patent was invalid because practical automobiles predated the patent by a number of years.

A significant part of the Ford case was the claim that Lenoir had constructed an automobile in 1860. The Ford lawyers cited an article describing a self-propelled vehicle built by Lenoir that appeared in the June 16, 1860, edition of Le Monde illustré. There is no other evidence that this vehicle was ever built. Even Lenoir never claimed that he had built an automobile as early as 1860. The claims made for and by him during the late 1890’s were also placed into evidence. When the Selden attorneys imported British experts to deny that an automobile could be powered by a noncompressing engine, the Ford Company actually built a copy of Lenoir’s engine and used it to drive a Ford automobile. The attention drawn to Lenoir’s name in this case has done much to establish him in the list of automobile pioneers.

Whatever one’s opinion about Lenoir’s importance as an inventor of the automobile, his engine stimulated the production of better engines and, ultimately, automobiles. All the pioneers of automobile design studied his engine. Those uninterested in automobiles were encouraged to build better stationary engines for industrial use, and Lenoir played a significant role in the transition from the age of steam to the age of oil.

Bibliography

Bishop, Charles W. La France et l’automobile. Paris: Librairies-Techniques, 1971. This French-language work gives considerable space to advocating Lenoir’s importance and priority in developing engines and automobiles. The author carefully explains the invalidity of all complaints made against Lenoir or his engine. He is convinced that Lenoir invented the automobile and that others, such as Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler, were inspired by his inventions.

Cardwell, D. S. L. From Watt to Clausius: The Rise of Thermodynamics in the Early Industrial Revolution. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971. Gives the early history of the effort to develop an efficient heat engine.

Cummins, C. Lyle, Jr. Internal Fire: The Internal Combustion Engine. Lake Oswego, Oreg.: Carnot Press, 1976. This is a history of the internal combustion engine. Although Lenoir’s work is covered only in a portion of one chapter, it is one of the best accounts of his activities in English. Contains technical details, graphs, and illustrations of the engine.

Field, D. C. “Internal Combustion Engines.” In A History of Technology, edited by Charles Singer et al. Vol. 5. New York: Oxford University Press, 1958. Details the general development of the internal combustion engine and dismisses the value of Lenoir’s engine except for the observation that its limited commercial appeal encouraged others to attempt improvements.

Grayson, Stan. Beautiful Engines: Treasures of the Internal Combustion Century. Marblehead, Mass.: Devereux Books, 2001. The first chapter in this illustrated history of the internal combustion engine describes Lenoir’s creation of “the seminal machine.”

Mott-Smith, Morton. The Concept of Energy Simply Explained. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 1964. Presents the concepts of heat engines as well as major scientists who have dealt with the subject and their theories. Contains little mathematics, and the author does a good job of explaining theories simply without being simplistic.

Turner, A. J. From Pleasure and Profit to Science and Security: Étienne Lenoir and the Transformation of Precision Instrument Making in France, 1760-1830. Cambridge, England: Whipple Museum of the History of Science, 1989. Turner’s monograph on Lenoir’s life and his role in transforming the manufacture of scientific instruments accompanied the museum’s exhibition, La Citoyen Lenoir: Scientific Instrument Making in Revolutionary France. Includes illustrations of compasses, telescopes, and other instruments displayed in the exhibit.