Internal-combustion engines

SECTION I - CLASS DEFINITION

This class contains inventions relating to prime movers or engines in which a combustible material is burned within an inc losed space or chamber and the heat energy thus developed converted into work by permitting the resulting products of combustion to act upon and through mechanical powers, the engine in question including suitable mechanism whereby the functions above enumerated are continually and automatically carried out, and such engine being designed to communicate power to some machine or device exterior to itself.

The space or combustion chamber above referred to is ordinarily the interior of the working cylinder of the engine, the products of combustion acting immediately upon a reciprocating, rotating, or oscillating piston moving within the same chamber in which combustion takes place or in an extension thereof. Some types of internal-combustion engines, however, besides fulfilling the conditions above mentioned, have a transfer valve operated by and in unison therewith located between the combustion chamber and the elements upon and through which the products of combustion act to thereby control the flow of said products, in which case the above mentioned transfer valve is operated to establish communication between the combustion chamber and the working cylinder at the instant of ignition or prior thereto, so that the piston is driven by burning products of combustion.