science · 31 March 1854 · 170 years ago
birth
Born 31 Mar 1854; died 12 Nov 1932 at age 78.
Scottish inventor of the two-stroke Clerk cycle motorcycle engine, widely used on light motorcycles and other small machines. In 1881 he patented an engine he built in 1876 to run on hydrocarbon vapour which used an explosion once every two strokes of the piston rather than the once every fourof the more common Otto cycle used by most automobile engines. In another major research direction, he studied the properties of gaseous fuel and its heating and lighting applications. The British Admiralty appointed him director of engineering research in 1916, followed by his knighting in 1917. His work appears in the two volumes of The Gas, Petrol, and Oil Engine.
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