Herbert Akroyd Stuart

He was the son of Charles Stuart, founder of the Bletchley Iron and Tinplate Works, joining his father in the business in 1887.

[1] In 1885, Akroyd Stuart accidentally spilt paraffin oil (kerosene) into a pot of molten tin.

This gave him an idea to pursue the possibility of using paraffin oil (very similar to modern-day diesel) for an engine, which unlike petrol proved difficult to vaporise in a carburettor because its volatility is insufficient.

The patent was entitled: Improvements in Engines Operated by the Explosion of Mixtures of Combustible Vapour or Gas and Air.

[2] One such engine was sold to Newport Sanitary Authority, but the compression ratio was too low to get it started from cold, and it needed a heat poultice to get it going.

As the engine's load increased, so did the temperature of the bulb, causing the ignition period to advance; to counteract pre-ignition, water was dripped into the air intake.

[5] Richard Hornsby and Sons built the world's first oil-engined railway locomotive LACHESIS for the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, England, in 1896.

In the former, the Akroyd engine's operating principle is described as follows: "... at the desired part of this compression stroke, the supply of liquid hydrocarbon is forced, in a spray form, on to the heated vaporiser, which almost instantly changes it into a gas...".

The fuel instead ignites due to high heat caused solely by piston compression inside the cylinder (>3000 kPa).

His body was transported back to England and was buried in All Souls Cemetery in Boothtown, Halifax, Yorkshire.