Technikatörténeti szemle 20. (1993)

TANULMÁNYOK - Garamvári Pál: 100 Years of the Carburetor

It was this lecture that made inventors realize how imperative was to obtain patent protection for the new engine. Their application for a patent under the title ..Innovations on petrol engines" was filed on 11th February 1893 (Archive Records Vd. XVIII. 2654). In this application carburetor appeared only as a claim of the patent with the following wording: „A mechanism to feed petrol, in which end of petrol pipe — being connected to air-supply tube — Is such that It is on a level with the fluid in the reservoir". However, they changed their minds and applied for an independent patent for the carburetor — having it taken out of the engine-related patent — on the 18th October, 1893 with and under the names Lázár-Bánki-Csonka. Referring to this date of 18th October, several historians in Western Europe deem Wilhelm Maybach as inventor of the carburetor, who applied for a patent on his device on 17th August, 1893, this date being posterior to that of Bánki et al. by about half of a year. Subsequent to getting the carburetor patented In Hungary, Bánki and Csonka applied for patent abroad too, at first in Germany on 7th November, 1893 with the names Lázár-Bánkl-Csonka, and then in America on 14th December, 1897 but on behalf of Bánki and Csonka only in the latter case. Pál Sporzon Junior gave a description on operation of the carburetor in periodical „Köztelek" No. 76, Vol. IV., 1894 as follows: „Petrol and air come to the carburetor via two ventils in a way that engine-piston — running in a cylinder which is open by the bottom part — produces atmospheric depression on going downwards and, as a result, external air will pour with high speed through the open valve in the carburetor linked with the cylinder, and passing by over the end of pipe — the other end of which being plunged into the petrol — it causes suction so that petrol will also run out via the partly-open end of the pipe, the point being that petrol becomes carburetted due to the high speed and mixed with the air in the carburetor." The Bánki-Csonka's carburetor is an extremely simple device. Most important building unit of it is a float of cork that provides for the unchanged level of fuel by the use of a needle valve. Revolution number of the engine used to be controlled with a butterfly value. The new carburetor was able to produce the perfect mixture required by the engine, i.e. the mixture consisting of evenly dispersed (super)fine fluid granis in a large volume of air. Superbness of the invention is clearly shown by the fact that theoretical solution of carburetors of today has been and is unchanged since hundred years, the time of its appearance.