-combustion Engine

We have several times remarked upon the great handicap placed upon
the pioneers of aviation by the absence of a light but powerful motor
engine. The invention of the internal-combustion engine may be said to
have revolutionized the science of flying; had it appeared a century
ago, there is no reason to doubt that Sir George Cayley would have
produced an aeroplane giving as good results as the machines which have
appeared during the last five or six years.

The motor engine and the aeroplane are inseparably connected; one is as
necessary to the other as clay is to the potter's wheel, or coal to the
blast-furnace. This being the case, it is well that we trace briefly the
development of the engine during the last quarter of a century.

The original mechanical genius of the motoring industry was Gottlieb
Daimler, the founder of the immense Daimler Motor Works of Coventry.
Perhaps nothing in the world of industry has made more rapid strides
during the last twenty years than automobilism. In 1900 our road
traction was carried on by means of horses; now, especially in the large
cities, it is already more than half mechanical, and at the present rate
of progress it bids fair to be soon entirely horseless.

About the year 1885 Daimler was experimenting with models of a
small motor engine, and the following year he fitted one of his
most successful models to a light wagonette. The results were
so satisfactory, that in 1888 he took out a patent for an
internal-combustion engine--as the motor engine is technically
called--and the principle on which this engine was worked aroused great
enthusiasm on the Continent.

Soon a young French engineer, named Levassor, began to experiment with
models of motor engines, and in 1889 he obtained, with others, the
Daimler rights to construct similar engines in France. From now on,
French engineers began to give serious attention to the new engine,
and soon great improvements were made in it. All this time Britain held
aloof from the motor-car; indeed, many Britons scoffed at the idea of
mechanically-propelled vehicles, saying that the time and money required
for their development would be wasted.

During the years 1888-1900 strange reports of smooth-moving, horseless
cars, frequently appearing in public in France, began to reach Britain,
and people wondered if the French had stolen a march on us, and if there
were anything in the new invention after all. Our engineers ha