Gunpowder engine

A gunpowder engine, also known as an explosion engine or Huygens' engine, is a type of internal combustion engine using gunpowder as its fuel. The concept was first explored during the 1600s, most notably by famous Dutch polymath Christiaan Huygens. George Cayley also experimented with the design in the early 1800s as an aircraft engine, and claims to have made models that worked for a short time. There is also a persistent claim that conventional carboretted gasoline engine can be run on gunpowder, but no examples of a successful conversion can be documented.

The earliest references to a gunpowder engine appear to be those of Samuel Morland in 1661. This consists solely of a letter of patent written by King Charles the Second that was received at Whitehall on 11 December 1661. No other information about this "engine" remains, but the description involves the use of vacuum to draw water.

The next known reference is by Jean de Hautefeuille in 1678, suggested as a solution to the problem of raising water from the Seine to supply Versailles. He presented two ideas, one using the vacuum like Morland's idea, and a second that used a U-shaped tube with water in one side and air in the other. When the gunpowder was lit in the air-filled side, the rise in pressure would drive the water up the other side.

Like early steam engine designs, these engines used the air or vacuum created by gunpowder to directly lift the water. There were no mechanical parts in the manner of modern engines, which translate the power in the gas pressure into any needed mechanical form.

In 1671, Denis Papin was given a job at the Academy of the Royal Library in Paris, where he worked under the Curator of Experiments, Christiaan Huygens. Huygens set Papin to the task of carrying out a research effort on air and vacuum, at that time a matter of widespread international study. As part of the experiments, Papin measured the force of a small amount of gunpowder lit in small iron and copper vessels. Papin published an account of all of these experiments in 1674 in New experiments on the vacuum, with a description of the machines used for making them.

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