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The First Steam Engine

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The first practical steam engine was patented by James Watt in 1769. Steam engines worked like this. The water in a holding tank would be heated up and pressure would build in the tank. Once the water pressure was built up high enough the pressure was released to make power and propel the vehicle. Some examples of steam powered vehicles are Trains, ships, and cars. There were ups and downs for this type of engine though. On the up side of steam power it’s has the ability to convert raw heat into mechanical work. Also steam engines burn fuel cleanly and efficiently, with relatively little pollution. One down fall to the steam engine is, the engine would loss pressure and you would have to stop and let the pressure rebuild itself before you could move on. Without steam engines being invented, nuclear engines probably would not have been invented. The gasoline engine is a engine that is ran off of gas. The gas gets sprayed into a cylinder and mixed with air. When that happens a spark is ignited and makes a explosion in the cylinder. This makes the piston move up and down at a very high speed. The piston is connected to a crank shaft and that is connected to a transmission. The transmission will turn a drive shaft and that will make your car move. This was a improvement over the steam engine. There was not any more stop and wait for the pressure to build. This kept you moving for longer periods of time. This also gave you a lot more power and speed. The downfall to this is the pollution that is given off from these engines. There are also other types of internal combustion engines like the two stroke engine. This is normally used for smaller engines like chainsaws, jet skis, and small motorcycles. In 1897 Rudolf Diesel made his firs successful diesel powered engine. He proved that fuel can be ignited without spark. Diesel engines are often

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