The Airplane - Jay Spenser [91]
In the summer of 1902, Léon Levavasseur—bearded, heavyset, and pushing forty—took a train from Paris to Normandy. He was a boat builder en route to consult with a friend and possible client. Creative, intelligent, and good with his hands, he had abandoned a beaux arts education years before to pursue his fascination with technology, gasoline engines in particular.
Wilbur Wright’s first attempt to fly the 1903 Flyer resulted in damage. Evident in this image are the bicycle-type sprocket chains connecting the engine to the propellers.
Library of Congress
Arriving at Etretat on the Normandy coast, Levavasseur met with Jules Gastambide, the wealthy owner of an electric plant in Algeria who was vacationing at that seaside village with his family. Gastim-bide admired Levavasseur because he recognized in him a unique combination of artist and engineer.
Overlooking the English Channel’s blue waters, the two friends talked of boats and more as they strolled Etretat’s verdant cliffs. Levavasseur expressed his belief that flying machines were possible. What’s more, he felt he could develop a lightweight gasoline engine to help make that happen.
Gastambide agreed and offered to fund such a development. It was not as risky as it sounded, since, as Levavasseur pointed out, this new engine could be applied to motorboats as well. Turning to Gastambide’s adolescent daughter, he added with Gallic charm that he would name it after her: the Antoinette engine.
Two years later, speedboats powered by new water-cooled Antoinette V-8 engines were sweeping to victory in all of Europe’s water races.
That same spring, Levavasseur was named engineering director of the first company ever created specifically to produce aero engines. Jules Gastambide was its president and Louis Blériot (soon to depart to continue pursuing his own developments) was vice president.
From mid-1906 onward, 24-hp and 50-hp Antoinette engines powered virtually everything that flew in Europe until Wilbur Wright’s arrival two years later. Santos-Dumont’s 14-bis had a 24-hp Antoinette that was soon replaced by the bigger model. Ferber, Farman, Delagrange, Blériot in his early models, Voisin, Esnault-Pelterie, and others also flew on Antoinette power.
Levavasseur next set his sights on airplane design. Starting in 1907, this artist turned engineer gave the world its first successful monoplane series. Like his engines, they too were called Antoinettes.
Internal-combustion engines are also called piston engines because within each of their cylinders is a piston that goes up and down. In a four-stroke engine with upright cylinders, this piston first moves downward to draw in a mixture of fuel and air. A valve closes and the piston then rises, compressing this mixture within the cylinder. A spark plug ignites the compressed mixture, and the resulting explosion pushes the piston down again. Next a different valve opens and the exhaust gases are expelled as the piston rises, ready to draw in more fuel and air.
The pistons are connected at their base to the engine’s crankshaft, which translates their back-and-forth motions into rotational energy. In the simplest airplanes, the crankshaft extends out of the engine to become the airplane’s propeller shaft and a propeller is bolted to it. In a more complex installation, the crankshaft connects to a transmission that steps down the engine’s rpm so that the propeller turns more slowly for greater efficiency. The propellers can do fancy things too, as we shall see.
As designers created piston engines, they found many ways to arrange the cylinders. If they lined them up one behind the other, the result was an inline engine. A six-cylinder engine of this type might be referred to as a straight six. Two inline rows, canted inward to turn the same crankshaft, could be mounted side by side on one crankcase to create a vee engine.
The cylinders can also be arranged radially around the crankshaft. The cylinder heads of these circular engines fan out like the points of a star. There are two types of engines arranged this way, the radial