You
would think that the man responsible for a world changing invention would at
least have his name in the encyclopaedia. In certain areas of motor sport, his
invention is so widely used that he would have statues in his honour in every
boat club, his picture in every bikers’ bar, and yet I’ll bet you have never
heard of him.
The
earliest internal combustion engine used a system that came to be known as the
four-stroke cycle. In engineering circles it is called the Otto Cycle since it
was invented by Karl Otto. A four-stroke engine needs to have valves, and a
mechanism for opening and closing them at the correct time, and it produces
power only once every two rotations of the crank. A well built two-stroke halves
the number of components and doubles the power.
Some
people reading this will have books on the history of bikes or boats and will be
able to explain that the two-stroke engine was invented by Sir Dugald Clark in
1881. Sir Dugald was an interesting character in his own right, but the engine
he designed was not the sort of two-stroke that became such a world-beater. An
engine operating on the Clark cycle uses valves like a four stroke and requires
a compressor to blow air, possibly mixed with fuel, into the cylinder. Some very
fine Clark cycle engines were made, by the Detroit Diesel Company for example,
but they were for ships or big trucks or locomotives. They never made an impact
on the mass market.
The
everyday two-stroke, which we find in everything from chainsaws to two hundred
horsepower V8 outboards, is a much simpler and cleverer design. It uses the
pressure in the crankcase below the piston to force fuel and air into the
combustion chamber and simultaneously push out the spent gases. Using only three
moving parts, the highest specific power output ever was recorded by a tiny two
stroke Suzuki which produced an astonishing 395BHP per litre. Imagine if you had
nearly eight hundred horsepower from your two-litre car engine
When
I first started researching into the early development of two strokes, I was
astounded to discover that not one of the standard works on the subject even
gave the name of the inventor of “our” sort of two stroke. Then at last I
found a book that stated that the crankcase compression two stroke was invented
by “Day”. It was two more years before I found that his first name was
Joseph. This is a brief outline of his story.
Joseph
Day was born in London in 1855 and trained as an engineer at the School of
Practical Engineering at Crystal Palace in London. On graduation he became a
trainee at an engineering firm in Bath. In 1878 he started his own business, an
iron foundry making cranes, mortar mills and compressors amongst other things.
Interestingly he advertised a new design of “valveless air compressor” which
he made on license from the patentee, Edmund Edwards. By 1889, he was working on
an engine design that would not infringe the patents that Otto had on the
four-stroke. This is what eventually came to be called Valveless Two-Stroke
Engine.
In
fact there were two flap valves in Joseph Day’s original design, one in the
inlet port, where you would probably find a reed valve on a modern two stroke,
and one in the crown of the piston, because he did not come up with the idea of
the transfer ports until a couple of years later. He made about 250 of these
first two-port motors, fitting them to small generating sets, which won a prize
at the International Electrical Exhibition in 1892.
It
was one of Joseph Day’s workmen, Frederick Cock, who made the modification
which allowed the skirt of the piston to control the inlet port and do away with
valves altogether, giving rise to the classic piston ported two stroke. Only two
of these original engines have survived, one in the Deutsches Museum in Munich,
the other in the Science Museum in London.
The
first American patent was taken out in 1894, and by 1906, a dozen American
companies had taken licenses. One of these, Palmers of Connecticut, had produced
over 60000 two-stroke engines before 1912. Many of these early engines found
their way into motorcycles, or onto the back of boats.
So
what happened to Joseph Day?
His
company in Bath was a general engineering one, and his engines were a sideline.
Much of his money came from the manufacture of bread making machinery, and the
prices of wheat were very turbulent around the turn of the 19th Century. The profitability of Day’s factory fluctuated just as wildly. These
were early days for the idea of the limited company, and shareholders, then as
now, could panic and bring down a company that they thought to be under threat.
The problem is made worse, (also then as now) by the publication of rumours, or
the deliberate orchestration of publicity campaigns in the press.
This
happened to Joseph Day, with the result that his firm was driven into
bankruptcy. A flurry of lawsuits followed, with Day as both plaintiff and
defendant. The Treasury Solicitor even tried to have him extradited from the USA
where he had gone to try to sell his US patents in order to raise money. The
case was eventually settled when the jury found that Day had no case to answer,
but it all came too late, and he went into virtual retirement by the seaside.
The development of his engine then passed to his license holders in America,
whose royalties restored his finances sufficiently to allow him to launch a
spectacular new venture after the First World War.
This
new enterprise was the exploration for oil. Unfortunately he was looking for it
in Norfolk in the east of England. A second financial disaster was the last
straw, and Joseph Day disappeared from public view between 1925 and his death in
1946. His obscurity was so complete that a mere five years after his death, the
Science Museum made a public appeal for biographical information about him –
with no apparent result.
I hope that everyone who has enjoyed two-stroke power will agree that this is a man who deserves to be famous. He should be in every engineering hall of fame alongside Otto, Diesel and Benz. It’s time to give Joseph Day his place in history. In putting the story on the web, I feel that I have done my bit to put the injustice right. Thanks to Wikipedia, Joseph Day's name is starting to turn up in schoolboy projects and on two-stroke forums.
An abridged version of this article appears on Wikipedia at:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Day
I
am deeply indebted in this article to the research of Hugh Torrens of Keele
University, and for anyone wishing to read the full story there is a booklet by
Hugh entitled “Joseph Day” The book is published by and obtainable
from the Bath Industrial Heritage Trust.