Today in Technology History
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August 13
Exactly one hundred years ago, the inventor of the first practical rotary engine was born.
Rotary engines don't have the cycle of up-down piston movements that normal engines have. Instead, rotary engines depend on a circular motion. The idea originated with an Italian named Ramelli in 1588 -- long before the first steam engines were invented -- but no one built a working rotary engine in the succeeding three and a half centuries.
Then along came Felix Heinrich Wankel, who was born in Lahr, a town in Germany's Black Forest, on August 13, 1902. Wankel (pronounced VONG-kel) had a natural mechanical ability; even though his life was spent working as a machinist and engineer, he never received formal instruction in those areas.
The rotary engine was Wankel's lifelong passion. In the 1920s, he came up with several potential designs, all of which he scrapped. In the 1930s, he worked for German car companies like BMW, making enormous improvements in the design of valves -- improvements which would later make his rotary engine possible. His valves were built into the engines of airplanes and torpedoes used by Nazi Germany during World War II.
Wankel himself apparently wasn't extremely interested in politics. He quit the Nazi party in 1932 and was actually imprisoned briefly in the mid-1930s when he publicized evidence of corruption in the Nazi party. Still, he got funding from the Nazi military, so when Germany lost the war, he was briefly imprisoned again -- this time by the French.
Finally, in 1957, Wankel built the first working rotary engines. Unlike normal piston engines, the Wankel rotary internal combustion engine produced almost no mechanical vibration, so it was extremely quiet. It was also much lighter and smaller than the equivalent piston engines, and it had fewer moving parts.
The rotary engine was eventually used in some airplanes, boats, motorcycles and cars. It didn't widely replace the piston engine, and it eventually fell out of favor with car buyers and manufacturers. Still, a comeback is possible: Mazda is reportedly going to introduce a new car with a rotary engine next year.
Wankel died in 1988. According to his obituaries, the man who spent his life working on engines never learned how to drive a car.
Related links:
Click here to read much more about rotary engines and Felix Wankel.
This page has a timeline of the history of rotary engines.
This page lists many more links related to rotary engines.
Click here to read a New York Times article about Mazda's plans to bring back the rotary engine. The article mentions that, by the time Wankel built a working rotary engine in the late 1950s, there "were already more piston engines in the United States than flush toilets."
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