Otto gas 1 cylinder sold for BIG $. Any connection to Canedy-Otto?

[gbent]

Harold Warp's Pioneer Village (the Warp of Warp Plastics) sold some of its excess collection. This engine brought a long dollar and I was wondering if there was any connection to the machine tool manufacturer?

Otto Horizontal Stroke 1 Cylinder Gas Engine

Otto Horizontal Stroke 1 Cylinder Gas Engine, 61” Length, 25” Width, 25” Height, NOTE: Early Otto Gas Engine Is Missing Parts Including Flywheel And Other Unknown Components. It Does Not Move By Hand And Needs Restoration. This Item Is Very Heavy, So Plan Accordingly

www.bigiron.com

on edit:

I see you have to be logged in to see the sale price. $365,500, no buyers rip.

 

[john.k]

Otto and Langen of the Motorenfabrik Deutz .......Nicholas Otto ,patentee of the IC engine..................About 1990,the Mines Department here had a clearing sale on their extensive landholdings by the Brisbane river in the coal district at Redbank Plains.............anyhoo ,there was an ancient coal washing and loading plant ,with a big horizontal single gas engine there ........All the scrappies and scroungers were there.........and this gas engine comes up......and it starts at $10....a couple of guys in suits there watch for a while .....and bid $10,000......WTF??......next its $20,000.......then $50,000........finally sells for $110,000..........my idiot mate Keryy Stanton goes over and tells them they have paid too much ,cause their is "no carburettor with it.".....turns out they re Germans from a museum ,and this is the oldest Otto engine still existing.........PS,the carburettor is there alright ,just it weighs 10 tons and runs on coal.

 

[Mud]

and this is the oldest Otto engine still existing....

Have any more info?
Here's the oldest one in the US, this is just up the road from me, it's fascinating to watch run.

Otto & Langen | Rough and Tumble Engineers Historical Association

 

[L Vanice]

Have any more info?
Here's the oldest one in the US, this is just up the road from me, it's fascinating to watch run.

Otto & Langen | Rough and Tumble Engineers Historical Association

Back around 1983, I joined the Early Engine Club that mostly met at Greenfield Village. One meeting I attended was hosted by Tom Stockton of Ann Arbor, MI. He had a fantastic engine collection at his home. I am pretty sure he had one of those Otto vertical engines that used gravity for the return stroke, like the one at Rough and Tumble. And I think I saw one in the Henry Ford (Museum) around the same time, back before they thinned out the engine display.

Larry

 

[john.k]

It was an Otto Silent Engine ,far as I know,of about 25hp ..........I got the job of getting the engine out of the building and out of this country....because I had a scrap metal export licence.......had to be quick ,because the underbidders would immediately apply for a historic artefact export review...and the Germans were well aware of this......due to the well publicised cases with a Me 109,and some traction engines and steam trucks.

 

[Joe Michaels]

Otto Gas Engines were built in the USA (possibly in or near Philadelphia, PA). Otto and Langen's engines were built in Germany and predated the Otto engine shown on the auction site.

The Otto vertical gas engines used a rack on the piston rod to engage a pinion on the flywheel shaft. When the cylinder fired, the piston rod shot upwards, and the rack caused the flywheel shaft to turn. A 'one way clutch' let the piston rod return downwards. I believe these engines may have used a partial vacuum in the cylinder to help return the piston and rod.

Certain early gas or gasoline engines do command some incredible prices. The engine that caught my eye is the Springfield. This engine was built prior to 1900 and is a 'side shaft' engine, having the cam shaft running parallel to the centerline of the cylinder. The Springfield engine was unique in that it had mechanical fuel injection rather than an early form of carburetor, and was extremely advanced for its time. Some years back, I made the acquaintance of a man named Emory Campbell. Campbell has a machine shop in a hard-to-find spot in Delaware County, NY. He restores antique hit and miss engines, and went so far as to make patterns and reproduce the Springfield engines. I last was in Campbell's shop a good 20 + years ago, and even back then, he was quoting some astronomical prices for some of the rarer hit and miss engines and said the Springfield engines were probably one of the most sought after and pricey engines. Campbell's home and shop are located in the midst of some of the finest trout streams. Wealthy people have bought up a lot of the real estate around there to access those trout streams. Somewhere along the line, some of those wealthy people discovered Emory Campbell and hit and miss engines. He said those wealthy second-home owners were buying fully restored hit and miss engines from him as well as ordering some of the reproduction Springfield engines. People who never got their hands dirty on a job or had to use machinery or heavy equipment to put bread on the table decided having a nicely restored hit and miss engine or two at the country place was the thing to do. Result was prices of old engines, even ones needing major restoration work and needing major parts either found or made from scratch, became quite costly. Campbell had gotten to the point where he was importing older engines from England and Europe. At one point, he had a horizontal two cylinder Worthington diesel engine sitting under an roof outside his shop. It was an ancient engine, and he'd start it on shop air and run it from time to time. It was a heavy enough engine to require a concrete foundation. Some collector wanted it badly enough that Campbell sold it. A lot of old iron, whether in the form of early gas engines, and even heavy trucks and construction equipment has become collectable and pricey as a result. Old trucks like B series Macks that sat rusting in corners of contractor's or trucking company or junkyards are suddenly collectable. I always marvel at how people who often never had to live and work with things like hit and miss engines, old farm tractors, old trucks, and similar wind up collecting them and driving up the prices.

 

[enginebill]

Harold Warp's Pioneer Village (the Warp of Warp Plastics) sold some of its excess collection. This engine brought a long dollar and I was wondering if there was any connection to the machine tool manufacturer?

Otto Horizontal Stroke 1 Cylinder Gas Engine

Otto Horizontal Stroke 1 Cylinder Gas Engine, 61” Length, 25” Width, 25” Height, NOTE: Early Otto Gas Engine Is Missing Parts Including Flywheel And Other Unknown Components. It Does Not Move By Hand And Needs Restoration. This Item Is Very Heavy, So Plan Accordingly

www.bigiron.com

on edit:

I see you have to be logged in to see the sale price. $365,500, no buyers rip.

There is no connection with Canedy-Otto. The engine was built by Schleicher Schumm & Co in Philadelphia in 1887 and is 4 HP. The Otto name is from Nikolaus Otto, inventor of the 4 cycle engine. This engine was unknown of and it is only one of 9 surviving slide valve flame ignition engines built in the US.

Joe Michaels, You are not quite correct on the Otto & Langen atmospheric gas engine. When the fuel and air mixture is ignited, the piston is thrown up doing no work on the upward stroke, momentum takes it up far enough, along with cooling from the cylinder walls to produce a partial vacuum under the piston. The higher pressure atmospheric air pushes down on the piston along with gravity and engages the rack to a one way clutch which turns the flywheel. The mean effective pressure on the piston over the length of the stroke is only about 7 PSI which is why the engines are so large for the power produced.

L Vance, The engine that you saw at the Henry Ford Museum was a 2 HP Crossley atmospheric gas engine and it is now on loan from Ford and is on display at Rough and Tumble.

 

[hendeyman]

The Otto and Langen engine is a free piston engine than has a very clever clutch to control the piston. When in operation, the piston sounds like it is trying to leave the building. The clutch mechanism is a bit noisy, but is very sure in operation. The only one I knew of was operating a sack hoist in a flour mill. Dr, Otto licensed his patent to several companies, including the Crossley Brothers in Manchester, England. The Otto engines as manufactured by Crossleys, employed the sliding flame
ignition system, which worked well enough but required careful maintenance to keep the slide gastight. By 1888, the ignition
was via a hot tube and timing was controlled by a valve. Shortly after this Crossley introduced their High Speed Electric light
engine.

One of these new style engines was exhibited at the November 1892 Agricultural Show at the Royal Dublin Society show
grounds in Dublin, Ireland. This engine had two heavy flywheels and ran 240 RPM vs the standard 160 RPM. It was rated
at 3 Nominal Horse Power, at handy way to avoid the taxman by underrating the actual horsepower, a dodge that was very
popular with traction engine manufactures. Despite the rather low compression ratio of about four to one, it still managed
about twelve horsepower at operating speed. The fuel was coal gas from the gasworks in Barrow street, but it would operate
on Dowson Gas (Producer Gas) as well. After the show closed, it was sold to a Pork butcher in Camden street, Dublin. For the next sixty-five years it ran a line shaft and when the last family member died the shop was shut down and sold to a developer.

In 1969, the developer, who owned the printing works across from my friend's machine shop, asked if we could remove an
old piece of iron that was impeding his remodeling work. Upon examination, we decided to run the engine before moving it
to our shop, a few blocks away. The gas meter had been removed, but we found an old bicycle in the loft and used an inner
tube to bridge the pipes and get the gas flowing. We ran the engine for about one hour before shutting it down and taking
it a part. It was complete with the antifluctuator, used to protect any gas lights on the system. The only item we could not
remove was the exhaust pot which was covered in concrete. The flywheels were carefully removed from the engine and
slowly rolled along the street to our shop, followed by the rest of the engine on the lorry. In 1973, on a visit to Dublin, I
bought the engine from my friend and shipped it to Arizona where it has been in storage. Now that I have retired, I will have
the time to work on not only my various Hendey projects, but the old Crossley as well. Hopefully, in the not to distant future, it will be back running the lineshaft in my shop.

Hendeyman

 

[true temper]

I was logged in and looked at other items sold, looks like they did very well should keep them in money for a long time.
Neat museum was up there 10 or 12 years ago.

 

[john.k]

Acoupla years ago,an 1883 Crossley was sold for $300,000 + ,which was a record then.

 

[enginebill]

Acoupla years ago,an 1883 Crossley was sold for $300,000 + ,which was a record then.

It was 10 years ago now and it went for $350,000 but it was a restored engine so $365,000 today for that engine which is rarer is not out of line. Two other slide valve engines were sold privately a few years ago for $350,000 each also.

 

[blcksmth]

Back around 1983, I joined the Early Engine Club that mostly met at Greenfield Village. One meeting I attended was hosted by Tom Stockton of Ann Arbor, MI. He had a fantastic engine collection at his home. I am pretty sure he had one of those Otto vertical engines that used gravity for the return stroke, like the one at Rough and Tumble. And I think I saw one in the Henry Ford (Museum) around the same time, back before they thinned out the engine display.

Larry

 

[michiganbuck]

Around Vermontville Michigan, an Amish fellow has a small single hit-and-miss engine of 2 or 3 Hp (?) running an ice cream maker. He goes about e fairs and the like to make pretty good money

 

[blcksmth]

Quite a few years ago I attended a 1 week steam class at Domino Farms taught by Tom Stockton. The last day of that class was at Tom's place where we had a chance to study Tom's collection of engines includind a 7.5 inch gauge steam locomotive. We then did a hydro test of the boiler on his steam powered life boat after which we fired the boiler and transported it to a park in Ann Arbor where we there is a very wide spot in the river. Once steam was up we left the dock under steam with hot dogs and chips on board. Tom explained operation of the engine, including the under water condenser, as we ate lunch while cruising around the river. I met Tom several times after the class at local antique machinery shows when he would play his calliope.

A close friend who is a member of the Early Engine Club invited me to attend a private evening tour of the Henry Ford Museum for a study of steam from Eli Whitney to steam turbines. What a fascinating evening.

Bob
WB8NQW

 

[Joe in NH]

And there is the story of the Otto Engine which given time, was "saved" from a collapsed barn in upstate New York. Originally part of the Francis Blake estate "Keewaydin" in Weston, MA. (About where the intersection of Route 128 and the Mass Pike is today - the house was removed to make room for the interchange.)

Saving An Historic Otto - Gas Engine Magazine

Hidden for over 40 Years/ a Rare Otto is on Regular View at Rough and Tumble in Kinzers, Pennsylvania

www.gasenginemagazine.com

I have the overhead clutch pulleys/drive which was used on Blake's Brown & Sharpe Milling Machine. (Overhead drive in Pix.)

The Otto Engine flywheel appears in the back.

Joe K

 

[Jim Christie]

After reading the links posted by Joe K I remembered reading about the Otto engine in the printed copy I have of this book

Audel's Gas engine manual : a practical treatise relating to the theory and management of gas, gasoline and oil engines, including chapters on producer ...

There are several hits for Otto in the search I tried that should be in the side panel .
Jim

 

[john.k]

Well.Im still in shock from having a farmer tell me he wanted $400 for an open crank Sundial engine..................with grass growing in the crankcase.

 

[L Vanice]

Well.Im still in shock from having a farmer tell me he wanted $400 for an open crank Sundial engine..................with grass growing in the crankcase.

I attended lots of farm auctions with my parents starting around 1954. I was looking for clocks and guns, but I did see lots of old gas engines with two flywheels that were too heavy to even think about buying. They usually sold for around $3 back then. In 1975, I built a Cole hit and miss from castings and had a lot of fun making tiny drip oilers to match the old ones I had collected. Then I got a few full size old gas engines and got them running and on a trailer to take to shows. Prices for as-found common engines were up to $100 by the '70's. I recall one of the old ones had a dead rat and other debris in the water hopper. It came out with hot water and lye. The work to make one into a show engine was considerable.

Larry

 

[john.k]

I used to go to every engine rally........her indoors would say......are you sure this is the way......and Id sniff ...and smell the kerosine in the air.....Yep,this is the way.............then over the next hill and all the sputs and pops and smokerings.

 

[true temper]

I just seen this on youtube.