The economy obtained by this engine was a great advance upon the Lenoir.  According to a test by Prof.  Tresca, at the Paris Exhibition of 1867, the gas consumed was 44 cubic feet per indicated horse power per hour.  According to tests I have made myself in Manchester with a two horse power engine, Otto and Langen’s free piston engine consumes 40 cubic feet per I.H.P. per hour.  This is less than one-half of the gas used by the Hugon engine for one horse power.

The igniting arrangement is a very good modification of Barnett’s lighting cock, which I have explained already, but a slide valve is used instead of a cock.

Other engines carried out the same principle in a different manner, including Gilles’ engine, but they were not commercially so successful as the Otto and Langen.  Mr. F.H.  Wenham’s engine was of this type, and was working in England, Mr. Wenham informed me, in 1866, his patent being taken out in 1864.

The great objection to this kind of engine is the irregularity and great noise in working; this was so great as to prevent engines from being made larger than three horse power.  The engine, however, did good work, and was largely used from 1866 until the end of 1876, when Mr. Otto produced his famous engine, now known as “The Otto Silent Gas Engine.”  In this engine great economy is attained without the objectionable free piston by a method proposed first by Burnett, 1838, and also by a Frenchman, Millein, in 1861; this method is compression before ignition.  Other inventors also described very clearly the advantages to be expected from compression, but none were able to make it commercially successful till Mr. Otto.  To him belongs the great credit of inventing a cycle of operations capable of realizing compression in a simple manner.

Starting from the same point as inventors did to produce the free piston engine—­namely, that the more quickly the explosive force is utilized, the less will be the loss, and the greater the power produced from a quantity of burning gas—­it is evident that if any method can be discovered to increase the pressure upon the piston without increasing the temperature of the flame causing this pressure, then a great gain will result, and the engine will convert more of the heat given to it into work.  This is exactly what is done by compression before ignition.  Suppose we take a mixture of gas and air of such proportions as to cause when exploded, or rather ignited (because explosion is too strong a term), a pressure of 45 lb. above atmosphere, or 60 lb. per square inch absolute pressure.  Then this mixture, if compressed to half volume before igniting and kept at constant temperature, would give, when ignited, a pressure of 120 lb. total, or 105 lb. above atmosphere, and this without any increase of the temperature of the flame.

The effect of compression is to make a small piston do the work of a large one, and convert more heat into work by lessening the loss of heat through the walls of the cylinder.  In addition to this advantage, greater expansions are made possible, and therefore greatly increase economy.