Étienne Lenoir

Étienne Lenoir was a Belgian-born French inventor who built and sold an early commercially produced internal-combustion engine in 1860.

Two-stroke engine: An internal-combustion engine cycle that completes its sequence of operations in two piston strokes. Lenoir’s engine used a two-stroke cycle to produce repeated power strokes.
Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir: The Belgian-born French inventor commonly known as Étienne Lenoir, noted for his 1860 gas engine. This expanded name identifies the inventor behind the engine and its patents.
Nikolaus Otto: A German engineer whose four-stroke engine became a foundation of modern gasoline-engine design. Otto’s later engines improved on the cycle and efficiency of Lenoir’s design.
Four-stroke engine: An internal-combustion engine cycle with intake, compression, power, and exhaust strokes. Its separate compression stroke made later designs more efficient than Lenoir’s engine.
Spark ignition: A method of igniting an engine’s fuel-air mixture with an electric spark. An electric spark ignited the gas mixture in Lenoir’s engine cylinder.
Gas engine: An internal-combustion engine that uses a gaseous fuel, such as coal gas or natural gas. Lenoir’s invention belonged to the emerging class of engines powered by manufactured gas.
Alphonse Beau de Rochas: A French engineer who described the four-stroke engine cycle in a patent granted in 1862. His proposed cycle offered a more efficient alternative to Lenoir’s engine operation.
Otto engine: A four-stroke gas engine developed by Nikolaus Otto and Eugen Langen and commercialized from 1876. It superseded Lenoir’s less efficient engine in many stationary applications.
Illuminating gas: A manufactured fuel gas historically used for lighting, heating, and powering machinery. This was the fuel that Lenoir’s stationary engine burned.
Lenoir engine: An 1860 internal-combustion engine that burned illuminating gas and used spark ignition to drive a piston. Its commercial production marks the milestone most closely associated with Lenoir.

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