16 replies to this topic

[eldridge]

Hello all

Strangely, I woke up this morning with the aforementioned Question running around my head.

What is not so strange however, is that I have no idea as to the answer!!

Perhaps this could be asked in 3 ways.

1. Earliest use in an airplane?
2. Earliest use in a racing car?
3. Earliest use in a car?

Can anyone help answer these questions?

Thanks

[robert dick]

According to Pomeroy's "Grand Prix Car", a six-cylinder Chadwick "was entered for, and won, the Wilkes Barre Hill Climb on May 30, 1908, and was thus victorious in the first event for which a blown engine was entered." "The first experiment embrased a single-stage centrifugal booster driven at nine times crank speed (so that the rotor speed was about 18.000 rpm) by a flat belt from the 18-in. flywheel. The results were excellent and led to a decision to ensure actual supercharging of the cylinders by means of a higher pressure booster in three stages."

A few months earlier, Ariès had tested a blown single cylinder in view of the 1908 GP des Voiturettes/Dieppe. But the blown Ariès did not start.

In 1912 Hispano-Suiza entered a batch of blown (a double piston pump driven from the nose of the crankshaft) three-litres in the voiture légère class of the GP at Dieppe, but Hispanos did not appear.

During the war Mercedes tested piston compressors and vane type pumps (patented by Wittig) but experienced mechanical and lubrication troubles and turned to the Roots blower.
In 1919 a Roots blower was fitted to a Mercedes Knight sleeve-valve engine, then in a 28/95 six-cylinder seven-litre poppet valve engine. A supercharged 28/95 was entered in the 1921 Targa Florio. Supercharged 1.5-litre cars were entered in the 1922 Targa.

In 1923 Fiat mounted Wittig blowers on the four-cylinder 1.5-litre 803/403 and the eight-cylinder two-litre 804/404. First GP victory in September 1923 at Monza.

In 1924 Fiat switched to the Roots blower. Furthermore Alfa Romeo and Sunbeam appeared with Roots blowers while for track racing in the US of A Duesenberg preferred to mount a centrifugal blower.

[dretceterini]

Robert:

You have an amazing amount of knowledge on a great variety of subjects, so I must ask, just how big is your library, and how long have you been studying automotive history? Have you done any books?

[Roger Clark]

Originally posted by robert dick

In 1923 Fiat mounted Wittig blowers on the four-cylinder 1.5-litre 803/403 and the eight-cylinder two-litre 804/404. First GP victory in September 1923 at Monza.

In 1924 Fiat switched to the Roots blower. Furthermore Alfa Romeo and Sunbeam appeared with Roots blowers while for track racing in the US of A Duesenberg preferred to mount a centrifugal blower.

I thought that Fiat changed to the Roots supercharger for the 1923 Italian Grand Prix.

[Henk]

Originally posted by eldridge
1. Earliest use in an airplane?

During WWI Auguste Rateau developed a turbocharger for use in aero engines. After some tests with Lorraine and Gnôme & Rhône engines, in 1918 his design was fitted on the Renault 12Fe engines of a squadron Bréguet XIV-A2 reconnaisance planes. However, life expectancy of the device turned out to be very low. Metallurgy of the 1910s was still inadequate to deal with the turbine’s working speed of 30,000 rev/min.

After the war, Rateau’s design was patented in various countries. A pdf file of the British patent is at:
http://l2.espacenet.... 182786A I

[lanciaman]

This begs the question: when were turbochargers first used? They had widespread aero use in WW2, but for racing...?

[Aanderson]

The oldest car I have any reference to, using a supercharger is the 1907 Welch.

Art Anderson

[Aanderson]

Originally posted by lanciaman
This begs the question: when were turbochargers first used? They had widespread aero use in WW2, but for racing...?

Well, the 1952 Cummins Diesel Spl., built for that year's Indianapolis 500, used a turbocharged, 406 cid Cummins inline 6-cylinder diesel truck engine.

As the first commercially manufactured automotive turbochargers (at least in the US) were built for Cummins Engine Company by Schwitzer (founded by the very first winning driver at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1909, BTW), I would guess that the '52 Cummins Indy car surely was the first turbocharged race car, or at least very, very close to the first.

Art Anderson

[robert dick]

Originally posted by Roger Clark

I thought that Fiat changed to the Roots supercharger for the 1923 Italian Grand Prix.

Correct. Sorry for the incomplete description.
In the 1923 GP de l'ACF/Tours, all the Fiats went out with mechanical troubles, "including break-up of the rather primitive vane type of blower" (cit. Pomeroy).
1923 Italian GP : "In the two months that had elapsed since the French Grand Prix the Fiats had been fitted with Roots type blowers and they now showed their quality in no mean fashion" (Salamano and Nazzaro finished first and second).

Originally posted by dretceterini
You have an amazing amount of knowledge on a great variety of subjects, so I must ask, just how big is your library, and how long have you been studying automotive history? Have you done any books?

I have just quoted Laurence Pomeroy. Concerning the technical evolution of the racing car until 1954, his book "The Grand Prix Car" still is THE bible. Pomeroy himself often relied on the contemporary magazine "The Automobile Engineer"/London which is the best source for more detailed reports.

[uechtel]

Originally posted by eldridge
1. Earliest use in an airplane?
Thanks

Don´t know exactly the answer, but the question remembers me to have read an old book about the history of flight. As I remember it had been printed around 1920, but, alas, it emigrated to the US in company with my cousin many years ago. Nevertheless before that he had been so kind to let me read it and just in case this is of interest here I remember the passage about German "giant" planes from WW I, that the engines were within the main body of the plane , from where the propellers were driven by belts or chains. Then the whole cell (including engines and the space for the crew) was supercharged as a whole by a single compressor and the engine sucked its air from there.

But I don´t know whether the Allied counterparts (Handley Page I think I can remember) had already a more advanced design principle?

[dbw]

i think a better question wound be when a supercharger was first adapated to aero-auto-racing use.....certainly a geared-up centrifugal device was in use in blacksmithing well back into the horse age....piston driven air pumps certainly existed....when did root-type devices appear in technology?...other than physical adaptation,materials improvement,and the obvious automotive needs[rapid rpm change effect on the drive system, etc]..did the automotive folks actually invent any technology?

was exhaust turbo-charging a direct adaptation from aero use or did it exist in some prior form...[could a steam [exhaust] driven turbine have been used to provide some vital service for the steam plant?]

i guess my point is that the more i observe technology the less i find true innovation but observe very clever adaption...[some not so clever]

[Cociani]

Originally posted by dbw
when did root-type devices appear in technology?

I believe in the mid to late 1800's. They were originally used to ventilate mines.

[Doug Nye]

Somewhat off the point but I'm recovering right now from a real surfeit of exquisite superchargers seen during the Connoisseurship 2004 Symposium run the week before last in the breath-taking Collier Collection Museum at Naples, Florida.

The wonderful Chuck Davis fielded four of his Millers there, straight-8 centrifugally supercharged front-drive and rear-drive, the V16-cylinder Junk Formula 'two man' car and his 1935 front-drive Miller-Ford V8.

The centrifugally-supercharged 91 cubic inch cars have a microscopically fine-bore oil feed pipe delivering lubricant to the impellers.

The pipe is formed into a multi-turn coil before it vanishes into the fitting connecting it to the supercharger casing.

This, apparently, was the 'Lockhart coil', which intuitive engineer/driver Frank Lockhart devised to prevent over-lubrication of the blower.

He reasoned that line friction would act as a very effective and efficient flow-reducer to prevent over-oiling of the blower. After the multi-turn coil had been introduced to lengthen the effective length of the feed pipe, oil delivery was indeed reduced to the ideal drip-rate which balanced effective lubrication against oil burning and contamination.

Sheer genius.

I have been entranced by all things Miller since I first learned of the cars when I was about 10 years old. Hearing and seeing them run in isolation from all other background engine noise is perhaps the second greatest sensation known to man...

DCN

[Dennis Hockenbury]

Doug, that must have been an experience to savor.

The Miller-Ford, notwithstanding its difficult birth and tragic single race remains one of the most beautiful cars to have ever been constructed in America.

The Miller 91 is to my view, the signature work of art by Miller produced while he was at the very apex of his powers. With brilliant and significant contributions by Lockhart, Goosen, Offenhauser and many others, the single-minded artistry and commitment to perfection was entirely Harry Miller.

Having driven several of these treasures, I can say that nothing else that I have driven has reached into my soul in the manner that the Millers have.

They were, and remain today absolute jewels.

[Aanderson]

Originally posted by Cociani


I believe in the mid to late 1800's. They were originally used to ventilate mines.

If memory serves me correctly, the "Rootes" type blower (supercharger) was originally invented as a water pump, for removing water from underground mines, I believe in England? While certainly used early-on as an automobile supercharger (I think of Mercedes "Mitt Kompressor" and the "Blower Bentley"), by far the greatest number of Rootes blowers were used by General Motors, in two divisions: Electromotive Division and Detroit Diesel.

EMD has its beginnings with Winton Engine Company (the final iteration of the Winton automobile) when they developed a 2-cycle diesel engine for both industrial and railroad use. Finally becoming Electromotive Corporation (EMC), supplying inline 6-cylinder 2-cycle diesels for the early streamlined passenger trains in the mid-30's, they evolved into a complete locomotive manufacturer, and with their purchase by General Motors (becoming EMD) developed a very successful V-16 2-cycle diesel powerplant, and a V-12 variant as well, of (for the day) gargantuan proportions, 571cid per cylinder. These engines used large Rootes blowers, not so much for raising the horsepower by packing air into the cylinders, but to scavenge the exhaust gasses more completely from the cylinders of the engine on the downstroke, thus raising the efficiency of the engine. These engines powered approximately 75% of all US railroad diesel electric locomotives built since the 1930's, and in the late 1960's, were bored and stroked out to 645cid per cylinder, and eventually even had turbochargers added to them (retaining the Rootes blowers, BTW). In addition, the EMD 471-series V12 and V16 engines were universally installed in every US submarine built from the late 1930's until the end of diesel subs, along with being the principle powerplant for diesel naval auxiliary craft.

Detroit Diesel began building industrial and truck engines in the late 1930's, 71cid per cylinder, 2-cycle, based on the EMD 571's, and were virtually modular in construction. The same internals, primarily pistons, rods and replaceable cylinder liners, were used to build 2, 4, inline 6, inline 8, V6, V8, V12 (and a V16 built by joining, literally, two V8's end-to-end). The blowers used so universally in drag racing in the 60's and early 70's were simply GMC 6-71 and 8-71 blowers adapted for that use.

The so-called "rotary water pump" used in fire apparatus pumper engines from the 1890's through the 1940's are simply Rootes water pumps, using the same principle of interlocking impellers as well.

Art Anderson

[Barry Lake]

Interesting... the various purposes for which Roots type blowers are said to have been devised.

I read, some time in the long distant past, that their original use was for separating the chaff from the wheat, some time in the 1800s.

[Aanderson]

Originally posted by dbw
i think a better question wound be when a supercharger was first adapated to aero-auto-racing

was exhaust turbo-charging a direct adaptation from aero use or did it exist in some prior form...[could a steam [exhaust] driven turbine have been used to provide some vital service for the steam plant?]

i guess my point is that the more i observe technology the less i find true innovation but observe very clever adaption...[some not so clever]

You are right on target! Every form of supercharger (the Rootes "positive displacement" blower, centrifugal supercharger, and the turbocharger--itself a centrifugal blower driven by a turbine in the exhaust stream) all stem from water pump inventions of the 19th Century. In fact, one can buy a centrifugal water pump at any hardware or home-improvement store in the US, as a basement sump-pump, or for any use, from draining flooded basements, filling and draining swimming pools. (Centrifugal blowers are the basis for just about every vacuum cleaner used in home and shop as well!).

The small-diameter turbine technology found in the exhaust turbine of a turbocharger was found as early as 1890, in the so-called "steam generator" on railroad locomotives, as railroads moved to electric headlight and marker lights on locomotives, eventually changing out oil lamps in passenger cars. This generator used a small, approximately 12" diameter steam-driven turbine to power a DC Generator. If one looks at a photograph of any US-built steam locomotive built after about 1890 (or an older engine modified after that time) the steam generator can be seen, supplied by steam from the aftermost "dome" on top of the boiler, that being the "steam dome" where steam was drawn for supplying the cylinders, water injection pumps (the way steam boilers are supplied with fresh water), and all other steam "appliances" being used.

IIRC, turbochargers took time to develop, however. In the US, the driving force behind them was at first, Dr. Sanford Moss (who consulted for both Duesenberg and Miller) from General Electric. Daimler Benz adapted the turbocharger to their highly successful DB601 V12 aero engines, I believe, as did Junkers, for the Jumo V12's. In the US, both GE and Westinghouse developed turbochargers for aircraft engines, Westinghouse building large diameter units for the Pratt & Whitney 18-cylinder radial engines used in the P-47 Thunderbolt and P-61 Black Widow fighter aircraft, GE building them for Wright Cyclones used in the B-17, and the P&W's installed in the B-24. The only turbocharged inline aero engines used in any quantity were the Allison V1710's used in the P-38 Lightning. Most other combat aircraft engines used during WW-II utilized 2-stage centrifugal superchargers, however.

Schwitzer developed the compact turbocharger for the Cummins inline 6 cylinder 4-stroke diesel engines by the late 1930's, but those did not come into wide use until the late 1950's, although a Schwitzer turbocharger was used on the 1952 Cummins Diesel Spl., at Indianapolis that year. GM, of course, then adapted an even more compact turbocharger for use on the 1962-63 Oldsmobile Cutlass Jetfire, and the 1962-64 Corvair. Herb Porter began experimenting with turbochargers on Offenhauser engines around 1964 or thereabouts, I believe.

Art Anderson