Etienne Lenoir's two-stroke engine

Did you know that the gasoline engine was in fact invented by the Belgian Étienne Lenoir? Before the invention of the two-stroke gas engine, machines mainly operated with steam. These were large and only suitable for large factories. The Belgian Lenoir wanted to develop small appliances that could run on city or light gas that was available everywhere in the major cities. The principle was a steam engine in which a mixture of 6% city gas and 94% air was drawn in the first half of the first stroke. Halfway through the first stroke, the uncompressed mixture was set on fire with a spark plug (also an invention and Lenoir patent). The burning gas mixture expanded and pushed the piston with great pressure. During the incoming second stroke, the burnt gas mixture was expelled. The machine of Lenoir combines various technical knowledge from his time: both the steam engine and the recently invented ignition coil by the German inventor Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff, the ignition via the spark plug