In the following pages we are looking back in time to inventors that stumbled on ideas that we can use today and systems (if you have any information on early gas systems please contact us with the link above)  

Using Gas to propel vehicles is not a new idea there are stories of a fire cart (devil cart) being used in China as as early as 800BC durring the Chu dynasty but the use of gases in combustion engines is more recent 1840 +.

It's not necessary going far in the past to understand the history of first motors: just 150 years ago, in Tuscany we find the roots of the motors engineering.

The origins of gas -combustion engine seem start at the beginning of 1800, when there were various experiments in France and Great Britain, but with insufficient results because the studies were based on steam engine. In 1840-1850, father Eugenio Barsanti, a monk from Pietra Santa, particularly interested in mathematics and technical physics began to project an engine powered by a gaseous mixture. Thanks to his technical abilities he was called to take part to a "Granducale" commission to approve the better project for the reorganization of a swampy zone among the provinces of Pisa, Firenze and Lucca.

During that period, he met Felice Matteucci, an engineer from Lucca, expert in mechanics and hydraulics, who, understanding the potentialities of the project, was interested in Barsanti's research. A solid collaboration was established between the two, later transformed into a common plan: the 5th of June 1853, the official date of internal-combustion engine, the two masters deposited in the Assembly of the Academy of the Georgofili of Florence a parcel with three seals named "On some experiments by Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci".

Finally after a year the Granducato Government granted the licence. Therefore the society Barsanti Matteucci was created and commissioned to the Benini foundries of Florence the realization of the first engines of the new machine. The produced engines were approved by the experts and were used in boats, but later on France, Germany and Great Britain improved the engine with new licences. Barsanti/Matteucci's society faced serious difficulties not on technical aspects but on organization because of the modest capabilities of Italian industry that created difficulties to the wide scale production of engines.

Just while the situation seemed to return to normality, the prof. Barsanti, already sick, died in 1864. Matteucci continued the research but he had to abandon it very soon for a strong nervous exhaustion. With his death in 1887 died also the history of these two personalities, often forgotten but important for the development of internal-combustion engines which represent the origin of ancient and modern gas car engines

 Moreover, compared to the other "generators of mechanical energy " (steam engine that burnt coal and firewood) this engine was "clean". Gasoline and diesel oil weren't sold yet: the fuel was a mixture of air and gas!