Early Internal Combustion Pioneers: Lenoir, Otto, Clerk, Bernardi, and Delamare-Deboutteville

Lenoir Engine

                                                                      Otto Engine

                                                                      Nicholas Otto

                                                                    Ad for Clerk engine

                                                                Delamare-Debouteville

                                                                        Enrico Bernardi

Many Europeans experimented with using illuminating gas and petroleum as fuels for mechanical transport through internal combustion in the 1860s and later; notable among these were Etienne Lenoir in Paris, Nicholas Otto in Cologne, Dugald Clerk in Scotland, Enrico Bernardi in Italy, and Edouard Delamare-Deboutteville in France. But the first successes of major consequence in applying lightweight gasoline engines to vehicles came in southwestern Germany.