Letter: Recognition for pioneering engineer Frank Crossley who left a legacy of innovation and achievement

To me he was equal to another of our great innovators, Harry Ferguson - the inventor of the modern tractor.

He was the Ulsterman who perfected laboratory ideas and concepts of the four-stroke compressed charge engine that would enable modern transport and industrial power.

That pioneering engineer and innovator was Francis William Crossley who was born on November 29, 1839 at Glenburn, Co Antrim.

Always known as Frank, he with his younger brother William Crossley (1844–1911) would co-found the Crossley Brothers Company in Manchester in 1867 – a company that would become world famous for engines. I have been studying Frank Crossley for many years and when you look at his ideas and inventions he was an intellectual giant and an engineering genius of the highest order.

Frank would provide the technical knowhow and William, with his business skills, manage the Crossley Brothers Company. Together they made a formidable team that developed the production line and mass produced engines, supplying them around the world.

In 1876 German inventor Nikolaus August Otto (1832–1891) patented the four-stroke compressed charge internal combustion engine - the ‘Otto Cycle’. This engine was much more efficient, quieter than other atmospheric internal combustion engines that Crossley Brothers had been building since 1869.

The Crossley brothers in May 1876, after observing Otto’s experimental engine at Germany, had the great vision to see what this new design of engine could become if it was perfected. They acquired the UK and worldwide rights with the exception of Germany for this revolutionary engine, building their first Otto engines with important improvements in design by Frank Crossley.

In 1877, the Crossley Brothers would stop manufacturing the outdated atmospheric internal combustion engines and move solely to four-stroke engines. Within a few years the Crossley Brothers Company had built and sold over 10,000 engines.

Both Frank and William were committed Christians, only selling engines to those they found morally compatible. Frank was also a Gospel preacher, evangelist and missionary.

Nikolaus Otto lost a key part of his four-stroke engine patent in Germany in 1886 because a French engineer named Alphonse Beau de Rochas had already described the same concept in an 1862 patent. By that time the engine was globally accepted thanks to the Crossley Brothers Company and this allowed other companies to also start manufacturing the engines.

By March 25, 1897 when Frank Crossley sadly died from a heart attack aged just 57, he left a legacy of innovation and achievement that is so worthy of better recognition and celebration.

Today Nikolaus Otto is remembered as the father of the modern internal combustion engine, although it was a concept he technically did not invent. Whereas the Ulsterman who perfected the technology and mass produced it has been largely side-lined and historically forgotten.

I hope this little article will begin a process to finally give Frank Crossley the recognition he rightly deserves.

Stevan Patterson, Castlederg