OTTO, NIKOLAUS AUGUST


Meaning of OTTO, NIKOLAUS AUGUST in English

born June 10, 1832, Holzhausen, Nassau

died Jan. 26, 1891, Cologne, Ger.

German engineer who developed the four-stroke internal-combustion engine .

He built his first gasoline-powered engine in 1861, and in 1876 he built an internal-combustion engine using the four-stroke cycle (four strokes of the piston for each explosion), which offered the first practical alternative to the steam engine as a power source. Though the four-stroke cycle was patented in 1862 by Alphonse Beau de Rochas (1815–93), it is commonly known as the Otto cycle since Otto was the first to build such an engine.

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