George Brayton

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George Brayton (1830-1892)

George Bailey Brayton (born October 3, 1830 in Crompton, West Warwick , Rhode Island , USA , † December 17, 1892 in Kingsbury, Middlesex , England ) was an American mechanical engineer. He became known for the atmospheric combustion engine he developed , which is considered to be one of the first commercially successful ones, as well as the formulation of a continuous combustion process, which is the thermodynamic basis for gas turbines and jet engines . Outside of the USA, this process is predominantly called the Joule cycle .

Origin and early inventions

George Brayton was born to William H. and Minerva (Bailey) Brayton. His father was the manager of a small cotton mill and invented smaller devices and devices for looms . George developed a mechanical talent early on. He attended elementary school in the neighboring Pond Factory and experimented with steam engines from around 1853 on the farm near Warwick (Rhode Island), which his father had bought in the meantime . He completed the Scituate Seminary - probably referring to the Smithville Seminary in Smithville-North Scituate (Rhode Island) - and then worked as a machinist in Tom Hill's mechanical workshop in Providence (Rhode Island) before moving to Corliss Steam, which is also based in Providence Engine Company changed. His early inventions include a breech-loading -Gewehr, a bolt machine for the production of liquid containers and gas tanks .

Steam engines and generators

From 1848 he dealt with steam generators . The latter led to a patent on a section-based generator that the Exeter Machine Works in Exeter (New Hampshire) and Boston used for their mass-produced steam engines. George Brayton had his experimental workshop in Exeter. According to his brother Frank Brayton , George built a four-wheeled steam car in 1856 with the engine and generator he had developed, which is said to have driven on public roads in East Greenwich .

Brayton's Ready Motor

Drawing 1 from US Patent 125166
Lilthography of a Brayton engine

In addition to his patents in steam engine construction, Brayton also dealt with atmospheric combustion engines and designed the Brayton ready motor named after him . A gas-air mixture is fed into the combustion chamber, where it is continuously burned under pressure on a heated pipe mesh. In contrast to the gasoline engine, there is no explosion. The Brayton engine was developed as a stationary engine. It is a two-stroke engine that mostly works with liquid hydrocarbons . Spark plugs and carburettors are not required, but each cylinder ( called working cylinder here ) requires an additional cylinder that contains a compressed air pump. This is called a compression cylinder. Brayton received a patent for this on April 2, 1872. An improved version using oil as fuel was patented on June 2, 1874. The efficiency soon proved to be worse than that of the gasoline engine, so that the Brayton engine ultimately did not prevail. However, alongside Étienne Lenoir's gas engine, it is considered to be one of the first commercially successful internal combustion engines and a step in the development of the gas turbine .

Brayton exhibited his engine at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876 .

Driving tests

The city of Providence, Rhode Island , tested a streetcar with a Brayton engine, and in Pittsburgh in 1878 an omnibus with such an engine was tested. Brayton built this test vehicle with machinists George and James Fawcett (father and son), the body was made by the carpenter George Fritz . It had rear-wheel drive by means of drive chains and countershaft , a gear with helical gears and a friction clutch. The engine worked, but was far too weak for the massive bus and therefore tended to overheat. In the summer of 1879 the tests had to be discontinued by order of the City of Pittsburgh. James Fawcett later wrote that the attempts had been a complete failure.

The Brayton engine and the Selden patent

Replica of the Selden Road Engine (1877–1878 or 1905).
The Selden improved Brayton engine in the Selden Road Engine .

An improved version of the Brayton ready motor was part of George Baldwin Selden's Selden Road engine from 1877, which was filed for patent in 1879. After numerous amendments, a patent was not issued until the end of 1895. The Brayton principle then legally dominated the vehicle market in the USA for a number of years, without the series production of an automobile with a Brayton engine ever having occurred. In the Selden patent dispute it was legally established that Brayton had not built a light and functional motor vehicle and that the bus for Pittsburgh in particular had only had an "experimental" character. Brayton's attempt in Pittsburgh, as well as James Fawcett's complete failure, were mentioned in the trial.

Brayton was married to Rhoda . The family lived in Boston .

Honors

The engineering company Brayton Energy, founded in Hampton (New Hampshire) in 2004, traces its name back to George Brayton.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Unfortunately there is only one note in Providence Magazine in which Frank Brayton mentioned this steam car
  2. ↑ From a letter to George Fritz: I am very sorry to say that the car did not run, the engine not being able to move it. You ask me to explain what I mean by failure. I mean that Mr. B's plan to run the car with that 'hobby' of his, 'fluid circulation,' was a total failure, notwithstanding his contradiction; we, at his advice abandoned it and applied chains, but the engine would not move the car with them, would not even slip the wheels on wet ground, but would come to a standstill, so we concluded to give it up. I would like you to get me some information in regard to the experiment he made in Prov. some years ago, how much the engine did, how he succeeded in keeping it cool, and what grade he went up, and, in fact, everything connected with it, if it would not be too much trouble for you. I, goose that I was, put every faith in what the B's and their friends said and did not even inquire from outside parties. I remain, your friend Jim.
    J. Harold Byers: The Selden Case.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e George Brayton Obituary. Cassier's Magazine, 1912; What is meant is Kingsbury in the Hendon Rural sanitary district, Middlesex, now London
  2. ↑ a b Kimes, Clark: Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1805-1942. 1996, p. 142.
  3. ↑ a b Brayton Energy, homepage.
  4. ↑ a b https://www.google.co.in/patents/US125166
  5. ↑ a b earlyelectric.com : Timeline : 1872
  6. ↑ Representations of the Selden Road Engine
  7. ^ Byers: The Selden Case.
  8. ^ Beecroft: History of the American Automobile Industry. P. 57
  9. ↑ https://www.google.co.in/patents/US151468
  10. ↑ Grace's Guide: The_Engineer; June 30, 1876.
  11. ^ W. Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent (1955/2011), p. 140.
  12. ↑ US Patent 549160 Road engine
  13. ^ W. Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent (1955/2011), pp. 139-140.
  14. ^ W. Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent. 1955/2011, p. 132.

literature

  • Henry Ford: My life and work. 18th edition. Paul List Verlag, Leipzig approx. 1923.
  • Beverly Rae Kimes: Pioneers, Engineers, and Scoundrels: The Dawn of the Automobile in America. Published by SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Permissions, Warrendale PA 2005, ISBN 0-7680-1431-X . (English)
  • Beverly Rae Kimes (ed.), Henry Austin Clark Jr.: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. 3. Edition. Krause Publications, Iola WI 1996, ISBN 0-87341-428-4 . (English)
  • Vincent Curcio: Chrysler: The Life and Times of an Automotive Genius. 1st edition. Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-19-514705-7 . (English)
  • William Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent. Great Lakes Books / Wayne State University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-8143-3512-3 . (English)
  • David Beecroft: History of the American Automobile Industry ; Reprint of a series of articles in The Automobile magazine , first published between October 1915 and August 1916. Publisher: lulu.com, 2009; ISBN 0-557-05575-X .

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Brayton, George
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brayton, George Bailey (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mechanical engineer, developer of the Joule cycle
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1830
PLACE OF BIRTH Crompton, West Warwick
DATE OF DEATH December 17, 1892
Place of death Kingsbury, Middlesex , England