About the engine
Henry Ford's First Internal Combustion Engine
In 1893, a 30-year-old machinist from Detroit, Mich., was learning about a new technology, the internal combustion engine. In a backroom shop at the Detroit Electric Illuminating Co., he and a few of his co-workers made a crude working engine. On Christmas Eve, 1893, he took the experimental engine home to show his wife. Clamped to the kitchen sink using the electric light socket for ignition power, his wife Clara controlling the fuel dripping into the intake mixer, Henry Ford started not only the little engine, but his own path to becoming an automotive and industrial icon known the world over."
- Leon Ridenour
Related information links:
Related information links:
- Ford's Vision Restored : Feb. 2008 article from Gas Engine Magazine.
- Everything but the Kitchen Sink… Engine : Information about the original engine on display at the Henry Ford Museum.
- Drawing of the 1893 Kitchen Sink Engine, "First Gasoline Engine by Mr. Henry Ford"
- Drawing of the 1893 Kitchen Sink Engine, "Ignition System of First Ford Engine"
- Drawing of the 1893 Kitchen Sink Engine, "Diagram of 4 Cycle Internal Combustion Engine"
- Photographs of the original engine : For best viewing view full screen; note that you can zoom in on some of the photos.