rleete

iTrader: (21)

The year is 1900. Location, USA. The Wright Brothers are trying to make an airplane(!) and have asked you for help making an engine to power it. All the larger companies that make engines have turned them down as crackpots who only want a single engine.

The brothers have calculated that they need a minimum of 8 hp, but 10 would be better. Has to have loads of torque, because the 8-foot plus diameter propellers will take a lot to get spinning. Must be under 180 pounds when installed.

Aluminum is still fairly rare/expensive at this time, and most of the modern alloys are yet to be invented. So, sheet metal (steel) and cast iron are probably the best bet. Massive cylinders (bore 4", stroke 4") are going to be required to get the torque necessary.

Could you, with your knowledge of modern engines, carburetors, spark plugs, etc. make an engine to satisfy their requirements? Maybe not make it yourself, but at least design it so it can be built? Remember this is still the earliest stages of the industrial revolution, and steam engines, which are the workhorse of the day are still mostly hand built, including the fasteners.


I have been looking at early car engines recently. Model T, Model A and earlier. Some to the things they did in the earliest engines, like buzz boxes for coils and make-or-break contacts for spark seem kind of ***-backwards now days but were cutting edge at the time. Heck, even the Wright brothers didn't use spark plugs, as they were only recently invented, and hadn't become mainstream yet. Fuel injection has not been perfected, and even carburetor design is still in its infancy. It got me thinking if I could have done it.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I would like to think that, given access to the same resources which the Wrights had at the time (ample financing, knowledge of Henry Ford's engine designs, skilled machinists, a metal foundry capable of pouring aluminum alloys, and Charles Taylor), that yes, I could probably design a similar engine to the 1903 Wright A. Especially given that qualities such as durability and longevity were measured rather differently in an era in which pressurized oiling systems and recirculating coolant were considered optional.

This question reminds me a great deal of a podcast to which I listened some number of years ago. I'm sure I'll never find the original, but a Youtube video which conveys the story in similar fashion is below.

It is told by Thomas Thwaites, a British writer with an interest in technology. In the second-to-last final book in the Hitchhikers' trilogy Mostly Harmless, Arthur Dent, finding himself marooned on a prehistoric Earth, finds himself thinking about the fact that, as a highly advanced human from the 20th century, he is in possession of knowledge of technology which would be indistinguishable from magic to these primitive creatures which surround him.

And, yet, he realizes that while we knows how to use a car, and a computer, and a digital watch, he doesn't understand how anything of a technological nature actually works.

"Left to his own devices he couldn't build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich, and that was it."

And that made an impression upon Mr. Thwaites, who decided to take it upon himself to build a toaster.

From scratch.

This is his story: