Technikatörténeti szemle 18. (1990-1991)

TANULMÁNYOK - Trudeau, Terence: The Work and Life of John Csonka

kerosene. Their purpose was to replace natural gas with kerosene engine fuel. These experiments met with little success. Surface evaporators could only be used with stationary engines, because they were bulky, and the heating of kerosene represented a constant fire hazard, especially so on moving vehicles. The famous original gas engine of Lenoir 1860 as perfected by August Otto and Eugen Langen, resulted in the first four-stroke engine. These engines were fueled exclusively by natural gas. In 1883, John Csonka's 3 HP gas engine was patented. It could use either natural gas, or kerosene. Although this was a four-stroke engine, it eluded the still valid patent of Otto, by using an ingenious link-disk combination instead of the 2 : 1 gear ratio specified in the Otto patent. In 1886 Csonka and Donát Bánki, both, excellent designers, started a joint effort to improve gas engines. At this time Csonka had already designed and built several engines, including a greatly improved model, buht in 1879. Ah their joint inventions were published under the name of "Bánki-Csonka." This sequence of names was used for alphabetic reasons only. Several gas engine designers have tried unsuccessfully to develop a system which could replace the dangerous and bulky surface evaporator used in those days. Csonka and Bánki were also working hard to find a solution to this problem. On a spring evening in 1890, after a tiring day at the Technical University in Budapest, Hungary, the two good friends walked to a nearby coffee-house. On one street corner Csonka caught sight of a flower-girl who sprayed her flowers with water, using an air blowing atomizer, operated by a rubber bulb. Csonka pointed to the girl and exclaimed: "Look at that girl! There is the solution! We should feed the liquid fuel into the engine, atomized by air flow!" (Fig. 2.) Then he stepped up to the girl, gave her a. large bill and said: "I want no flowers, I only wish to remunerate you for the idea you have just inspired in me." With those words the two friends left the astonished flower girl, and entered the coffee house. There they immediately drew a sketch of a liquid fuel atomizer on the white marble table. This time they did not read the newspapers, as they normally would have, but hurried back to the University. Working late into the night, the first design of the carburetor was created. Csonka machined and mounted it on their newly buUt kerosene engine. The engine started up at once, and ran on kerosene, fed only through the carburetor, without the use of a surface evaporator. Thus, in the summer of 1890, the carburetor was born (Fig. 3.). The first model of the carburetor had the peculiarity, that its float was not made of a tinned plate, but of solid cork. Although the first carburetor was fully operational by the summer of 1890, according to the documents quoted above, the two friends did not apply for a patent until February 11, 1893 (Fig. 4, 5). There application might have been delayed even further, had an unexpected event not taken place the day before, on Feb. 10, 1893. On that day Pál Lázár, professor at the Technical University in Budapest, delivered a public lecture on the topic of "Farmi Engines", and in the course of his talk he described the Bánki-Csonka atomizing carburetor. This unexpected turn of events for-