If you made a trip to the National Museum of Science and Technology “Leonardo da Vinci” in Milan, among the rooms you would find a machine that could look like an old pedal sewing machine, but you would be wrong.
It is a first rudimentary example of an internal combustion engine dating back to the second half of the 19th century.
This innovative engine, forerunner of our car engines, was patented by two Italians E. Barsanti and F. Matteucci and this patent was filed in several European countries including Italy and Great Britain. This first internal combustion engine immediately found application as an outboard engine for boats as this could only be used for moving vehicles, resulting in non-functional engines starting from standstill. It was necessary to wait until the end of the same century for the invention of the clutch to be able to make this type of engine applicable to land vehicles and therefore to cars.
From 1853 to today, the rudimentary internal combustion engines have led to the design and construction of engines that are increasingly complex and suitable for any purpose and means.
They have been enriched with various tools including ignition coils and ignition cable s that have transformed it into the engine we all know today.
But taking a step back, one of the first examples of an engine is precisely the steam engine which, unlike today’s ones, uses an external combustion method.
But what is the difference between an external combustion engine and an internal combustion engine?
The main difference, as the name implies, is the method of combustion of the fuel, be it coal, diesel, petrol or gas.
In the first case, the fuel is used to heat the working fluid, through which the thermal energy is converted into mechanical work. In the second case, first of all, there is the presence of the combustion chamber in which the burnt gases generate high pressure and increase in volume such that they push the piston down, and the piston in turn rotates the crankshaft and transmits work. to the drive shaft. And it is precisely in this case where we find our ignition cable .
The ignition cable, in internal combustion engines, has a fundamental role because by connecting the ignition coil to the pipette, it sends the ignition signal thanks to its high resistance to high engine temperatures and therefore allows the ignition signal to be transmitted which then it starts the combustion, the ignition of the engine and therefore the movement of the cars.
The ignition cable, therefore, although a small tool in the large agglomeration of the internal combustion engine, plays a small but large role in the complex functioning of the car since without it there would be no transmission path for the main starting signal.