Internal Combustion
Steam engines are great, and they have a room full of them at the Anson Engine Museum… … many of them today chugging away with steam from a natural gas boiler. But they are only about 10% efficient at turning the energy in their fuel into usable work. By the mid 19th century inventors were wondering if you could get more efficiency by burning the fuel inside the engine rather than using it to generate steam pressure. In 1858, Belgian…