N.Otto was selling 634, 3 hp piston engines a year by 1875 and, between 1908 and 1927, Ford sold over 4 million Model T automobiles.
In 1903 the Wright Brother's engine produced 1 horsepower for each 17 pounds of engine weight. In 1943, the Rolls...
In 1848, John Stringfellow made the first powered flight with a 10-foot wingspan model aircraft driven by a steam engine.
in 1903, Charlie Taylor built the Wright brothers' first gasoline engine. It was a 4 cylinder in line, 4 stroke engine with a compression ratio of 4.7-to-1. It developed 12 horsepower (8.9 kW) from 201 cubic inches (3,290 cc), and weighed 180 pounds (82 kg) providing just 0.06 hp for each pound of engine weight. In 1906, Léon Levavasseur built a successful water-cooled V8 engine for aircraft use.
The earliest aero engines had one or more rows of cylinder either in a single line or in two lines arranged in a Vee typically at 60 degrees but occasionally at 180 degrees for the Flat or Boxer designs. An inline engine had the advantage of a low frontal area to minimize drag. The disadvantages included a relatively poor power-to-weight ratio, because the crankcase and crankshaft were long and thus heavy. An in-line engine could be air-cooled but getting air to the rear cylinders was difficult so the larger engines were typically liquid-cooled. Radial engines were inherently more compact and the power to weight ratio was better and although they increased the frontal area, and thus drag, they were easier to air cool and that eliminate the need for the liquid cooling pumps and radiators that added more weight.
A good example of an in-line engine was the iconic 27-litre Rolls-Royce Merlin, liquid cooled V-12 Engine. The 12 cylinders were arranged in two banks, tilted at 60 degrees, with all pistons driving a common crankshaft. A flat piston engine had the cylinders located on either side of a central crankshaft (effectively a V engine with a 180-degree angle between the cylinder banks). A Boxer engines was a type of flat engines with each pair of opposed pistons moving in and out at the same time.
Karl Benz built the first flat engine in 1897 for automobiles but they became rare on automobiles and are now more often used on light aircraft.
One of the first aircraft to fly, the Pearse monoplane in 1902, was later powered by a flat-twin engine and the 1909 Santos-Dumont Demoiselle aircraft were powered by boxer-twin engines.
An opposed-piston engine had two pistons sharing the same cylinder, with a crankshaft at each end of the cylinder, and no cylinder head. The two pistons shared a central combustion chamber. Gasoline and diesel opposed-piston engines have been typically used in ships, military tanks, and factories.
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The opposed-piston engine had the advantages of no cylinder head and valve train, which reduced weight, complexity, cost, heat loss, and friction losses. They also had compact, low frontal profile. However, power from the opposed pistons had to be geared together adding weight and complexity when compared to engines using a single crankshaft.
In 1898, an Oechelhäuser 600 hp (447 kW), two-stroke, opposed-piston engine was installed at the Hoerde ironworks.
The French company Gobron-Brillié made an opposed-piston engine powered automobile and, on 17 July 1904, this became the first to exceed 100 mph (161 km/h) over one kilometre. The engine used a single crankshaft at one end of the cylinders and a crosshead for the opposing piston instead of the usual second crankshaft.
