Oil and The Internal Combustion Engine Essay -- Engines History Histor

Oil and The Internal Combustion Engine Our cars are powered by an obscure fuel source. The answer to this lies many decades or, more accurately, perhaps centuries ago. The inventors and pioneers such as Rudolf Diesel, Felix Wankel and Nikolaus Otto, would have never considered the fuel that they did if they knew the kind of political ramifications that it would have had on the world today. I propose, that due to this fuel source, the internal combustion engine as we know it has been a perpetual source of top-down exploitation ever since Henry Ford mass produced the first model T. At the time of the engine’s development, Gasoline (which is a derivative of oil) was cheap, plentiful and most importantly, a potentially powerful fuel. It provided smooth combustion and the ability to work hard without all of the messy details usually associated with the maintenance of farm animals. That is why the first engines were rated in ‘Horse power’ since it was a direct measure of how much work an engine could perform in relation to its animal counterpart. Jump to the present, we use internal combustion engines in our everyday lives, most notably in our cars but also when we demand electricity which was generated using engines. We depend on the work crews that cut down trees for the wood we use to build our houses. How do they do that? Answer: chainsaws, which use one kind of engine. When someone’s home is on fire, how do the firefighters extinguish the fire? Simple, they use engines that pump water into their hoses so they can put out the blaze. The list of uses that the internal combustion engine has would take up more space than this paper can allow. So, it comes as no surprise that the internal combustion engine has such a tight grip o... ...mbustion too!) The problem that Americans face is, exploitation through the use of this technology by powerful corporations and government legislation. It would seem that all of the dinosaurs keeled over and died in all of the world’s political hot spots. But actually, this â€Å"black gold† is simply sought after due to the great demand attached to it. I think that if oil were to disappear tomorrow, we would still have exploitation from powerful ethanol companies. Perhaps there is no escaping the greed for profit no matter what the fuel supply. But certainly with a ‘renewable’ fuel supply, we can fight back a little bit harder in future generations. Works Cited: 1. Money, Nov 2000, Vol.29, Issue 12, Pg. 73, Ron Insana, Daniel Yergin 2. Forbes, Nov 2000, Vol.166, Issue 13, Pg. 56, Robin Gibb 3. Fortune, Oct 2000, Vol. 142, Issue 10, Pg. 58, David Stipp