Pyréolophore

In 1807 the brothers ran a prototype internal combustion engine, and on 20 July 1807 a patent was granted by Napoleon Bonaparte after it had successfully powered a boat upstream on the river Saône.

Niépce is made of lycopodium spores, the combustion of which is the most intense and the easiest; however this material being costly, they replaced it with pulverized coal and mixed it if necessary with a small portion of resin, which works very well, as was proved by many experiments.

Niépces' machine no portion of heat is dispersed in advance; the moving force is an instantaneous result, and all the fuel effect is used to produce the dilatation that causes the moving force.In 1807 the brothers constructed and ran a prototype internal combustion engine, and received a patent for ten years from the Bureau of Arts and Trades (French: Bureau des Arts et Métiers) in Paris.

[4] To prove the utility of the Pyréolophore to the patent commission, the brothers installed it on a boat, which it powered upstream on the river Saône.

The Niépce brothers, by their own device and without using water, have managed to create a commotion (explosion) in a confined space which is so strong that the effects appear to be comparable to a steam engine or fire pump".

The fall of the timing piston also expels the exhaust gases via a pipe above the ignition chamber, which is closed off by a valve during the burn part of the cycle.

Over the next ten years, Claude remained in London, settled in Kew and descended into delirium, whereby he squandered much of the family fortune chasing inappropriate business opportunities for the Pyréolophore.

[12] In 1824, after the brothers' project had lost momentum, the French physicist Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot scientifically established the thermodynamic theory of idealized heat engines.

This highlighted the flaw in the design of the Pyréolophore, whereby it needed a compression mechanism to increase the difference between the upper and lower working temperatures and potentially unlock sufficient power and efficiency.

[citation needed] To celebrate the bicentenary, the Paris Photographic Institute (Spéos) and the Niépce House Museum produced a 3D animation of the working machine in 2010.

Manuel Bonnet and Jean-Louis Bruley of the Maison Nicéphore Nièpce and Hadrien Duhamel of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers (ENSAM) created the video.