Gunpowder engine

George Cayley also experimented with the design in the early 1800s as an aircraft engine, and claims to have made models that worked for a short time.

There is also a persistent claim that conventional carboretted gasoline engine can be run on gunpowder, but no examples of a successful conversion can be documented.

The gunpowder engine is based on many previous ideas and scientific discoveries, developed by multiple people independently.

Leonardo da Vinci described in 1508 a device to "lift heavy weight with fire" using a cannon barrel and gunpowder.

[9][10] The next known reference is by Jean de Hautefeuille in 1678, suggested as a solution to the problem of raising water from the Seine to supply Versailles.

[12] In 1671, Denis Papin was given a job at the Academy of the Royal Library in Paris, where he worked under the Curator of Experiments, Christiaan Huygens.

[13] Huygens set Papin to the task of carrying out a research effort on air and vacuum, at that time a matter of widespread international study.

In spite of there being no further examples of particle work on the part of Papin, he did carry on a continued correspondence with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz on this and other topics.

[19] By 1682, the device had successfully shown that a dram (1/16th of an ounce) of gunpowder, in a cylinder seven or eight feet high and fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter, could raise seven or eight boys (or about 1,100 pounds) into the air, who held the end of the rope.

"[22] He took up development of a new engine design starting in 1807, and quickly settled on a gunpowder engines as the preferred solution, noting "Being in want of a simple & light first mover on a small scale for the purpose of some preparatory experiments on aerial navigation, I constructed one in which the force of gunpowder & the heat evolved by its explosion, acting upon a quantity of common air, was employed.

In Cayley's design, two cylinders were arranged one over the other, the lower acting as a combustion chamber, and the upper containing a piston.

A small charge of gunpowder was introduced into the bottom of the lower cylinder and lit by a hot rod heated by candles.

Gunpowder was stored in the upper portion of this chamber, and small amounts were metered out to fall into the combustion area below.