Frank Crossley and the modern internal combustion engine
One of our greatest pioneering inventors has never received the accolades he so richly deserves. To me he was equal to another of our great innovators, Harry Ferguson the inventor or the modern tractor.
He simply put was the Ulsterman who perfected laboratory ideas and concepts of the four-stroke compressed charge engine that would enable modern transport and industrial power. A technology that over the last 150 years played such a pivotal role in the modern world we know today.
That pioneering engineer and innovator was Francis William Crossley who was born on the 29th November, 1839 at Glenburn, County 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. Sometimes also called the “Otto Cycle”. This engine was much more efficient, quieter than other older atmospheric internal combustion engines that Crossley Brothers had been building using the patents of Nikolaus Otto and Eigen Langen (1833 – 1895) 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 also in 1876 with notable very important improvements in design by Frank Crossley. The engine would be patented to Nicolaus Otto, of Deutz, Germany, Francis W. and William J. Crossley, of Manchester, England, UK on the 4th June, 1877 under British Patent number 2,777 and later under other worldwide patents.
That same year Crossley Brothers would stop manufacturing the outdated atmospheric internal combustion engines and move solely to four-stroke engines, the move to the new engine was that rapid. Within a few years the Crossley Brothers Company had built and sold over 10,000 engines.
Both Frank and William were committed Christian’s only selling engines to those they found morally compatible. They improved working rights for employees and developed a range of health care. Personally financing many community improvements as Philanthropists.
Frank was also a Gospel Preacher, evangelist and missionary travelling around the world.
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 the 25th of March, 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, Co. Tyrone