Herbert Akroyd Stuart

Herbert Akroyd-Stuart (28 January 1864, Halifax, Yorkshire, England – 19 February 1927, Halifax) was an English inventor who is noted for his invention of the hot bulb engine, or heavy oil engine.

Akroyd-Stuart had lived in Australia in his early years. He was educated at Newbury Grammar School (now St. Bartholomew's School) and Finsbury Technical College on Cowper Street. He was the son of Charles Stuart, founder of the Bletchley Iron and Tinplate Works, and joined his father in the business in 1887.

In 1885, Akroyd Stuart accidentally spilt paraffin oil (kerosene) into a pot of molten tin. The paraffin oil vaporised and caught fire when in contact with a paraffin lamp. This gave him an idea to pursue the possibility of using paraffin oil (very similar to modern-day diesel) for an engine, which unlike petrol would be difficult to be vaporised in a carburettor as its volatility is not sufficient to allow this.

His first prototype engines were built in 1886. In 1890, in collaboration with Charles Richard Binney, he filed Patent 7146 for Richard Hornsby and Sons of Grantham, Lincolnshire, England. The patent was entitled: "Improvements in Engines Operated by the Explosion of Mixtures of Combustible Vapour or Gas and Air". One such engine was sold to Newport Sanitary Authority, but the compression ratio was too low to get it started from cold, and it needed a heat poultice to get it going.

Akroyd-Stuart's engines were built from 26 June 1891 by Richard Hornsby and Sons as the Hornsby Akroyd Patent Oil Engine under licence and were first sold commercially on 8 July 1892. It was the first internal combustion engine to use a pressurised fuel injection system.

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