Documents and patents

After having built the prototype of their engine, Barsanti and Matteucci continued their research and simultaneously felt the need to patent their invention before others could copy its principles and usurp the credit. Thus began the process of obtaining a patent in England , Europe's leader in commerce and industry.

They then turned to Haehner, the Saxon consul in Livorno, who had commercial relations with England, to begin the process of obtaining the patent.

Shortly thereafter, Haehner informed our scientists that the British Patent Office had suspended the granting process because other patents similar to theirs had been granted in the country (Brown, Wright, Barnett and Johnton, and others); furthermore, Engineer May, a skilled technician at the Office itself, had expressed a clearly negative opinion on the invention.

Barsanti vigorously opposed this decision, which he considered absurd, and asked Haehner to point out to the English Patent Office that his engine was not original in principle, in that it used a gas explosion to obtain work, but in the mechanical system that transformed the explosion itself into mechanical work.

Following this, Barsanti and Matteucci obtained the long-awaited certificate, which was granted to them on 12 June 1854 ; the certificate, bearing the number 1072, was published in the London Morning Journal under the title Specifications of Eugene Barsanti and Felix Matteucci Obtaining Motive Power by the Explosion of Gases.

In a letter dated June 26, 1854, Haehner informs Matteucci of the achievement of the certification.

Encouraged by the achievement of the certificate and also by the experimental tests on the engine built by Officine Benini, on 21 October 1854 Barsanti and Matteucci established the Association for the Construction of a New Engine in order to best exploit future patents and the fruits of the application of the invention. The Association was open " to anyone who might wish to participate in this undertaking with a share of the profits proportional to the financial commitment" . This was a preview of the company that would be founded five years later.

In 1854, or perhaps the following year, Barsanti and Matteucci apparently built an engine according to the design in the English certificate. It was a twin-cylinder, delayed-action engine , with two twin cylinders operating on the same shaft.

Certainly in 1856 a two-cylinder engine conforming to the English certificate of 1854 was built by the Benini Foundry, capable of developing a power of 8 horsepower.

The engine was used to power some machine tools in the workshop of the Maria Antonia railway station in Florence, as reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Lombard Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts, vol. III, fasc. XVII, Milan 1863.

After obtaining the certificate in England, Barsanti and Matteucci let it lapse due to failure to pay the installment or ignorance of English patent laws or for some other reason that we do not know.

Meanwhile, the engine underwent new and continuous improvements which enabled our scientists to request another new patent in the same country.

This operation, according to experts in the field, had to be carried out in the strictest secrecy, without publicity even from the press or otherwise. Mr. Newton , an employee of the Patent Office in London, expressed himself in these terms.

On June 12, 1857, Barsanti and Matteucci finally obtained a second English patent , no. 1655. The provisional patent certificate was sent to them on June 29 of the same year.

On December 12, 1857, the Great Seal Patent Office granted patent number 1655 to Barsanti and Matteucci for the invention of an Improved Apparatus For Obtaining Motive Power From Gases.

There were two construction solutions for this patent: the first is that of the auxiliary piston engine or, as indicated in the specifications of the engine patent, equipped with a counter-piston, the second is that of the engine without auxiliary piston.

The engine, which was of the delayed action type , still employed a rack and pinion equipped with a jack to convert the longitudinal motion of the piston into rotary motion.

The cylinder was positioned vertically with the head facing downward; it was open at the top to allow the piston to move in the air. The lower part was closed with a sturdy iron cap and bolts (similar to the cylinder heads of modern engines).

The cap housed two conical valves (like those in modern engines) with springs that opened outward. In the lower part of the cylinder (explosion chamber), where the explosion of the gaseous mixture took place, a second piston (auxiliary piston or "counter-piston") could slide, controlled by an eccentric in turn set in motion by the crankshaft; its function was to draw in the gases from the mixture and expel the products of the previous combustion from the cylinder.

At the side of the combustion chamber was a device, similar to the "drawer" of steam engines, which regulated the introduction of air and hydrogen into the combustion chamber through two interconnecting holes (ports). The drawer was moved by two rods controlled by two eccentrics rotated by the crankshaft.

In the same patent, Barsanti and Matteucci also presented the design of a simpler engine that could reach a greater number of revolutions . The engine did not have an auxiliary piston, and the single piston traveled the entire length of the cylinder, performing the same functions as the auxiliary piston: it drew in the gas mixture and expelled the exhaust gases at the end of its "useful" stroke. The various phases were organized by a valve that closed the air and gas inlets. It was essentially an engine similar, if not identical, to the one already tested in the workshop at the Maria Antonia railway station in Florence , although it differed in that it had only one cylinder.

The electrical discharge in the mixture took place when the gas inlet port was closed and the piston was in the process of rising in the cylinder, disconnected from the crankshaft by the usual sprocket jack which meshed with the piston rack.

We note that the text of this patent had never been made known to scholars interested in the work of Barsanti and Matteucci (even though its existence was known). It predates the French patent by a very short time and can therefore be considered the first important official patent for the Barsanti and Matteucci engine.

In addition to the above, two observations are reported.

First, Barsanti and Matteucci intended to address the application of their engine to the locomotive. Indeed, they write:

“ … when applying this Invention to a locomotive engine, as it is intended to supply the place of two double action (or high-pressure) cylinders, four cylinders must be employed, one on each of two pairs of driving wheels, the main shafts being made to drive these wheels by means of connecting rods or gearing combined in such a manner as to change the direction of rotation by means of clutches .”

Secondly, since the engine reached very high temperatures during operation , the combustion chamber was surrounded by a cavity (racket) where water could flow for cooling:

“… This cylinder is divided into two unequal parts, the smallest of which u,v,s,x, is intended for the working of the piston. This chamber is surrounded with a racket filled with water for the purpose of preventing it from attaining too high a temperature .”

On January 9, 1858 , Barsanti and Matteucci also obtained the patent in France . The drawings contained therein are absolutely identical to those of the English patent, except for the lettering, which is different in some parts of the drawings. It is therefore the French patent for the same engine already patented in England.

The French patent was preceded by a similar patent obtained in the Piedmontese state on December 30, 1857, under number 579 in Volume VI of the Savoy Patent Office. Barsanti and Matteucci had turned to the agency of Capuccio and Latini, which had handled the relevant procedures.

On January 2, 1858, they submitted the patent application in Turin for the first version of the opposed-piston engine : the patent bears the number 700 of Volume VII of the Patent Office of the Kingdom of Piedmont.

In August 1861, Barsanti, Matteucci and Babacci (the Forlì-born engineer had begun collaborating since February 1857) submitted a request to the Patent Office of the Kingdom of Piedmont for a patent relating to a new type of deferred-action engine with opposed pistons.

The patent was granted on October 28, 1861, Volume III No. 141 , entitled New Improved Method for Employing the Explosion of a Mixture of Atmospheric Air and a Flammable Gas to Obtain a Useful Force.

An examination of the patent shows that the text is similar to that of the English patent of 31 December 1861 n°3270 entitled Improved apparatus for obtaining motive power from explosive compounds , registered on 29 April 1862.

This patent also contains a reference to a machine already built by the inventors which undoubtedly corresponds to the engine built by Escher-Wyss of Zurich.

In March 1862, Matteucci traveled to Paris on behalf of the New Engine Company to renew the expired patents and claim priority of the invention over Lenoir's direct-action engine. On March 31, he filed a second French patent, no. 53609, issued solely in the name of Felice Matteucci, entitled " A Perfected System of Air and Gas Engines ," registered on May 24, 1862.

On 16 July 1862, the English patent was also registered in Belgium with the n°12922 issued to Barsanti, Matteucci and Babacci with the words "Brevet d'importation" and with the title Nouveaux Systèmes perfectionnés pour obtenir une force motrice par la détonnation d'un mélange d'air atmosphérique et d'un inflammable gaz et par une autre detonating composition quellconque.

After Barsanti's death and Matteucci's removal from the technical management of the Società del Nuovo Motore, Felice continued to work on the engine and to imagine new solutions, which he patented in Italy on 25 June 1866 with patent no. 3096 issued to Felice Matteucci and his companions from Florence under the title Double-effect igneous-pneumatic engine , registered in the Industrial Bulletin of the Kingdom of Italy Volume VI no. 485.

Even Babacci, who had left the Società del Nuovo Motore in 1862, continued to be interested in the internal combustion engine, so much so that on 5 April 1868 he presented in Italy the patent n°3849 entitled New gas engine systems, Babacci systems , registered in the Industrial Bulletin of the Kingdom of Italy on 7 May 1868 Volume VIII n°195.

The patents documented to date obtained by Barsanti, Matteucci and Babacci are summarized below.

English patent procedures were always handled by Newton's London agency. Belgian patent procedures were handled by Bosquet's agency.