A History of the Oil Engine: NEW SHELL FILM

Abstract

A large gathering of the Press saw No. 3 in Shell's ‘Industrial Notebook’ series of films, A History of the Oil Engine last month and acclaimed it as one of the most interesting films ever produced for anyone with some slight knowledge of or interest in oil engines. This is a documentary film of importance to recorded history because many of the ‘shots’ have never been seen by the general public before, having lain in archives and museums only. The history is traced from an original sketch of Christian Huygen's gun‐powder engine in the 17th century, through 1861 when Otto first conceived the idea of building a new kind of engine, and James Robson, Ackroyd Stuart, Rudolf Diesel, James McKechnie and others right book ‘An outline history of the oil engine and its lubrication’, and whether one sees the film or not, the book is a ‘must’ for every student of engineering, and for everyone with any interest in oil engines. Many of the stills from the film are reproduced here, the older ones without retouching, and there are reproductions of drawings from old patent specifications of two and four‐stroke gas engines of the 1870/1880 period. In fact wo found that after the film had whetted our appetites and shown us how little we really knew about the early history of the oil engine, this book has enabled us to follow up with confirmation of facts, figures and dates.

Citation

(1961), "A History of the Oil Engine: NEW SHELL FILM", Industrial Lubrication and Tribology, Vol. 13 No. 12, pp. 35-35. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb052685