Science: New Diesel

At Springfield, Ohio, the Foos Gas Engine Co. announced successful tests with a new Diesel engine designed for use in automobiles. Its striking feature was its ability to turn up 1,200 revolutions per minute. Small single-action Diesels of its type had never before done better than 200 r. p. m.

The advantage of Diesel motors over gasoline motors in automobiles would be their simplicity of structure and absence of vibration. Instead of a carburetor and valves, a Diesel* motor has a small spray to inject fuel into the cylinder at the moment when the piston has risen and greatly compressed the air in the chamber. Compression makes the air so hot that ignition is automatic and the explosion gradual and more powerful than the complex explosion obtained with a spark plug. No generator or distributor is needed by a Diesel; no pressure oiling system. The Diesel’s fuel is crude oil—almost any oil will do. The Foos engineers maintained that their new contrivance was so perfected that even buttermilk, when introduced to its cylinder, would explode with sufficient violence to propel a stranded motorist from a wayside farm to the nearest fuel station.

* The principle of the oil-compression engine was worked out by Engineer Rudolf Diesel (1857-1913) of Germany, who fell overboard from an Antwerp-Harwich mail steamer and was drowned in 1913, before the full possibilities of his work had been realized.