Greatest Engine Invention in Human History?
Greatest Engine Invention in Human History? 16 votes
6 votes
5 votes
2 votes
1 vote
2 votes
Comments
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F.O. Row Peter Puffer, You left off
I think its the anti gravity magnetic resonance engine the UFO spaceships are using
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Internal Combustion (Gasoline)
Oh FFS, Yella! Steam engine is the ultimate slow strategy Boomer answer.
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Steam (Piston or Turbine)
Steam paved the way for IC engines and the industrial revolution
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Internal Combustion (Gasoline)
I agree, but that's like saying Atari is better than original NES.
Spoiler…
Nintendo wrecks the shit out of Atari.
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Steam (Piston or Turbine)
I didn't say kewlest or most fun. Christ.
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Internal Combustion (Gasoline)
I would still say internal combustion given it birthed petroleum and all the shit that has come along with petroleum being turned into a million different things.
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Steam (Piston or Turbine)
Steam engine is the most consequential invention of all time. Horsepower and speed of transit (aside from @creepycoug figuring out Deepwater navigation with Galleons and Guns ) had remained fixed for thousands of years.
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Steam (Piston or Turbine)
Not so fast my fren. Rockefeller became the richest man in the world based on selling Kerosene for lighting and heating before the internal combustion engine was a thing. Standard Oil was broken up in 1911 which was just a few years after the first Model T (1908).
Kerosene birthed the petroleum bidness and saved the whales too ( which some people forget ). Gasoline was a by product of the distillation of kerosene.
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F.O. Row Peter Puffer, You left off
Shannon Sharpe’s Instagram.
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Steam (Piston or Turbine)
Don't forget that nuclear subs and Nimitz and Ford class carriers are steamships.
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Jet
Specifically, today's high-bypass turbofans and the original 1950s turbofans. The tech improvements for turbofans (Pratt and Whitney JT3D) basically led to the jet age, and today's high-bypass engines are so amazingly efficient and reliable. Prior to 1900 the concept of traveling around the world was confined to ships and only the incredibly wealthy, all with significant risk, taking weeks or months to navigate.
Today you (or cargo) can get from virtually any inhabited place on the globe to any other within 36 hours with an incredibly high level of safety and reliability. Not just the wealthy either.
Steam turbine is acknowledged for its importance as well.
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Steam (Piston or Turbine)
I need to pick this apart a bit…
Steam did far more to shrink the world than any of the other options presented here. In 1800 it took about 30 days to sail from England to New York and it was still a treacherous undertaking. By 1907 the RMS Lusitania was doing the same trip in 4 days time and it was relatively safe barring the occasional iceberg or Das Untersee Boot. With railroads the gains were even more impressive as it relates to land travel.
The modern turbofan jet is a remarkable invention, but it's still a marginal gain on the internal combustion engine. Remember a DC-7 could cruise at 350 MPH and fly from NY to London in a decent amount of time. Modern jets are safer and have better range, but don't represent as great of leap forward as steam.
And keep in mind that most movement of goods throughout the world is till occurring on water or rail. Flying shit somewhere is crazy expensive. Ask @Logistics !!
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Jet
The question was greatest :)
The current speed and reliability of transport by high bypass turbofans is super impressive. The impact of steam turbines was probably higher as the starting point was lower. Is greatest measured by margin improvements or top end ability?
Engine performance is not completely correlated to airframe safety, but the 338 DC-7s produced killed 714 people. The nearly 2000 787s and A350s in service haven't killed a passenger.
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Steam (Piston or Turbine)
"Greatest" is subjective obviously. I'm looking at through the lens of what changed life for sapiens the most. Have you read Sapiens yet @whlinder btw? Great read.
Current levels of commercial air travel are certainly one of man kind's greatest (recent) achievements and engines play a part in that. I mean there's a reason why we can fly from San Francisco to Sydney on a wide body and only need 2 engines. But comparing a DC-7 to a 787 on safety is like comparing my wife's Audi Allroad Wagon with a 2.0 turbo to @RaceBannon 's 1956 Chevy. They both are internal combustion technology.
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Google.
The engine used by the most people in history.
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Steam (Piston or Turbine)
Christ. I thought you were like an oil man or something.
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F.O. Row Peter Puffer, You left off
I like the way you use Christ! as a term of quiet rye exasperation… amusing
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Steam (Piston or Turbine)
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F.O. Row Peter Puffer, You left off
Can't see the image but clicked on the link, Hilarious…
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Steam (Piston or Turbine)
We went from no engines to steam engines, and nothing better or even different came around for a long time. Easy pick.
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Steam (Piston or Turbine)
Steam Punks unite !
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Diesel
being the owner of 2 vehicles powered by I had to vote this way. Plus I felt sorry that Diesel had no votes
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Jet
Yella not a fan of incremental progress
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Steam (Piston or Turbine)
All of these marvelous inventions have experienced incremental progress.
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Jet
Indeed. I've been racking my brain as to where that phrase originated from in HH lore. Was that a Sark comment or a doogman excuse?
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Steam (Piston or Turbine)
Todd Turner to defend Ty
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Steam (Piston or Turbine)
Diesel is vastly underrated in this exercise. It's hard to imagine a world without diesel given it's role in agriculture, mining, construction, etc. It's the most efficient engine of them all. I think the only thing which puts the gas ICE ahead of diesel is its role on aviation. You're not putting diesel engines in B-29s or P-51s.
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Fuck Vanilla, so @YellowSnow wrote:
"Diesel is vastly underrated in this exercise. It's hard to imagine a world without diesel given it's role in agriculture, mining, construction, etc. It's the most efficient engine of them all. I think the only thing which puts the gas ICE ahead of diesel is its role on aviation. You're not putting diesel engines in B-29s or P-51s."
Not even close.
This chart doesn't include Stirling engines, which have an even higher theoretical maximum thermal efficiency, although it's just a lesser explored design. And it's also strictly thermal efficiency. From a power density standpoint, diesel falls even further behind.
And, yes, I've been an oil man for over 20 years. That doesn't mean I don't consider it to be an amazing stepping stone whose time has passed. I'm like the deckhand on the last whaling ship or the guysm trying to develop lighter, crisper buggy whips in 1910.
Speaking of steam, this is somewhat a fascination of mine as I wander the ol' workplace. It's such a steampunk concept: I leave a modern control room full of 80" 8K monitors and massive touchscreens and PID control, follow thousands of miles of fiber optic cable out into a process unit where we're boiling explosive material and moving it with steam. I'm constantly thinking, "How is this 2024?"
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Steam (Piston or Turbine)
Call me Ishmael!
Steam will never die. You can't put split atoms in a piston or a turbine.
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Jet
Fucking Todd Turner.
And today's UW Freshman and Sophomores were born during Ty's vicious animal understanding. CHRIST
