1910-1960

1910-1960

• 1916: Auguste Rateau suggests using exhaust-powered compressors to improve high-altitude performance, the first example of the turbocharger.
• 1920: William Joseph Stern reports to the Royal Air Force that there is no future for the turbine engine in aircraft. He bases his argument on the extremely low efficiency of existing compressor designs. Due to Stern's eminence, his paper is so convincing there is little official interest in gas turbine engines anywhere, although this does not last long.
• 1921: Maxime Guillaume patents the axial-flow gas turbine engine. It uses multiple stages in both the compressor and turbine, combined with a single very large combustion chamber.
• 1923: Edgar Buckingham at the United States National Bureau of Standards publishes a report on jets, coming to the same conclusion as W.J. Stern, that the turbine engine is not efficient enough. In particular he notes that a jet would use five times as much fuel as a piston engine.^[8]
• 1925: The Hesselman engine is introduced by Swedish engineer Jonas Hesselman represented the first use of direct gasoline injection on a spark-ignition engine.^[9][10]
• 1925: Wilhelm Pape patents a constant-volume engine design.
• 1926: Alan Arnold Griffith publishes his groundbreaking paper Aerodynamic Theory of Turbine Design, changing the low confidence in jet engines. In it he demonstrates that existing compressors are "flying stalled", and that major improvements can be made by redesigning the blades from a flat profile into an airfoil, going on to mathematically demonstrate that a practical engine is definitely possible and showing how to build a turboprop.
• 1926 - Robert Goddard launches the first liquid fueled rocket
• 1927: Aurel Stodola publishes his "Steam and Gas Turbines" - basic reference for jet propulsion engineers in the USA.
• 1927: A testbed single-shaft turbo-compressor based on Griffith's blade design is tested at the Royal Aircraft Establishment.
• 1929: Frank Whittle's thesis on jet engines is published
• 1930: Schmidt patents a pulse-jet engine in Germany.
• 1936: French engineer René Leduc, having independently re-discovered René Lorin's design, successfully demonstrates the world's first operating ramjet.
• 1937: The first successful run of Sir Frank Whittle's gas turbine for jet propulsion.
• March, 1937: The Heinkel HeS 1 experimental hydrogen fueled centrifugal jet engine is tested at Hirth.
• July 18, 1942: The Messerschmitt Me 262 first jet engine flight
• 1954: Felix Wankel's first working prototype DKM 54 of the Wankel engine