Brayton, George Bailey

SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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b. 1839 Rhode Island, USA

d. 1892 Leeds, England

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American engineer, inventor of gas and oil engines.

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During the thirty years prior to his death, Brayton devoted considerable effort to the development of internal-combustion engines. He designed the first commercial gas engine of American origin in 1872. An oil-burning engine was produced in 1875. An aptitude for mechanical innovation became apparent whilst he was employed at the Exeter Machine Works, New Hampshire, where he developed a successful steam generator for use in domestic and industrial heating systems. Brayton engines were distinguished by the method of combustion. A pressurized air-fuel mixture from a reservoir was ignited as it entered the working cylinder—a precursor of the constant-pressure cycle. A further feature of these early engines was a rocking beam. There exist accounts of Brayton engines fitted into river craft, and of one in a carriage which operated for a few months in 1872–3. However, the appearance of the four-stroke Otto engine in 1876, together with technical problems associated with backfiring into the fuel reservoir, prevented large-scale acceptance of the Brayton engine. Although Thompson Sterne \& Co. of Glasgow became licensees, the engine failed to gain usage in Britain. A working model of Brayton's gas engine is exhibited in the Museum of History and Technology in Washington, DC.

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Bibliography

1872, US patent no. 125,166 (Brayton gas engine).

July 1890, British patent no. 11,062 (oil engine; under patent agent W.R.Lake).

Further Reading

D.Clerk, 1895, The Gas and Oil Engine, 6th edn, London, pp. 152–62 (includes a description and report of tests carried out on a Brayton engine).

KAB