Delivering fuel to the fire was every early engine designer’s worst headache. In the 1890s, Rudolf Diesel proved the merits of his engine during four years of research. But it was Robert Bosch who made diesels practical by developing the first fuel-injection system, a fifteen-year effort. On the gasoline side, when Henry Ford was anxious to get an experimental engine running on Christmas Eve in 1893, he assigned his wife carburetion duty. While Henry whirled the flywheel, Clara dripped gas into the intake pipe. Their collaboration worked: Ford’s single-cylinder engine shot flames from its exhaust and shook the kitchen sink [...]
