How the Internal Combustion Engine Changed America Most every family owns and drives a car or truck these days, but many see automobiles as just another necessity and disregard any knowledge of what makes them capable of the feats that they accomplish. The driving force of automobiles is, of course, the engine. The internal combustion engine (ICE) propels them. Every ICE today bases their design on the first four-stroke engine created in 1867 by Nikolaus Otto. Otto created the engine to replace the big, inefficient steam engine that made small industrial use near impossible. Under the hood of most cars today is an engine that has the basic power cycle of four piston strokes (Funk 1). Many engines are different but all ICEs have the essential …show more content…
That is when Americans started to move away from agriculture and towards huge factories for mass production of numerous products, such as automobiles. Internal combustion engines created a huge gateway for the automobile industry and those involved in it. A steam engine needed a large area to run because of its size. On the other hand, ICEs did much more in a smaller package. The four-stroke cycle went like this: A camshaft spins opening and closing intake valves and exhaust valves, while a crankshaft spins around moving the pistons up and down. The timing of all this was crucial in making it actually work. The camshaft opens the intake valve letting in a gas-and-air mixture into the piston chamber, and then closes while the piston moves up to compress the gasses. At this point, the spark plug goes off, igniting the mixture creating a small explosion, which drives the piston down. On the next upstroke, the exhaust valve opens, thus letting the piston push the exhaust gasses out of the chamber, then repeats. This system is the most efficient way to run an engine that man has created thus far. Otto’s design forever changed the heart of all automobiles: the engine. It allowed others to develop over his design, which resulted in the evolution of Otto’s design into what everyone knows as the modern engine (Funk 3). Otto didn’t create today’s engine; others have added on and revised his initial design and put components onto the engine that make it more