Hot Air Engines Patents

Hundreds of patents have been filed in Europe and America to protect inventions or improvements on hot air engines. This section will present most of them.
Few patent have been filed before 1850. In the first half of the 19th century, just a few air engine had been invented. None of those have been a lasting technology.

Then after 1850, and especially after 1860 came the hot air engine industrial age. Quite a few well-working hot air engines were built, amongst them the engines of Laubereau, Shaw, Wilcox, Brown, Lehmann, Ericsson, Hock, Woodbury, Rider, Stenberg, Heinrici, Robinson, to name just a few. All these air engines were built on an industrial scale.

Hot air engines can be classified in three groups:

1. The air engines that were reliable and successful : they were usually built on a industrial scale.
2. The air engines that did work somehow, but still had crippling technical issues and therefore could not be built on an industrial scale.
3. Air engines that did hardly work or not work at all.

When browsing through the patents, depending on the inventors, one will see a fair amount of reissued patents. Those patents are usually very interesting as their purpose is to correct, improve or simplify the original patent. Each time whenever possible, for better reading, the reissued patent will be linked to the original patent.

The most successful Inventors

Other Inventors