Note 9 — The Beginnings

In commencing the design of the first engine, the first important decision arrived at was that of the number and size of the cylinders to be employed and the form in which they would be combined, although it is unlikely that this presented any serious problem. In a similar situation Manly, when he was working on the engine for the Langley Aerodrome,[9] was somewhat perturbed because he did not have access to the most advanced technical knowledge, since the automobile people who were at that time the leaders in the development of the internal combustion engine, tended for competitive reasons to be rather secretive about their latest advancements and designs. But although the standard textbooks may not have been very helpful to him, there were available such volumes as W. Worby Beaumont's Motor Vehicles and Motors which contained in considerable detail descriptions and illustrations of the best of the current automobile engines. The situations of Manly and the Wrights differed, however, in that whereas the Wrights' objective was certainly a technical performance considerably above the existing average, Manly's goal was that of something so far beyond this average as to have been considered by many impossible. Importantly, the Wrights had their own experience with their shop engine and a good basic general knowledge of the size of engine that would be necessary to meet their requirements.