Étienne Lenoir
Belgian engineer (1822-1900)
Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir, also known as Jean J. Lenoir (12 January 1822 – 4 August 1900), was a Belgian-French engineer who invented the internal combustion engine in 1858. Prior designs for such engines were patented as early as 1807 (De Rivaz engine) and 1854 (Barsanti–Matteucci engine).
He was born in Mussy-la-Ville (then in Luxembourg, part of the Belgian Province of Luxembourg since 1839). In 1838, he immigrated to France, taking up residence in Paris, where he developed an interest in electroplating. His interest in the subject led him to make several electrical inventions, including an improved electric telegraph.
Lenoir engine
By 1859, Lenoir's experimentation with electricity led him to develop the first internal combustion engine which burned a mixture of coal gas and air ignited by a "jumping sparks" ignition system by Ruhmkorff coil, and which he patented in 1860. The engine was a steam engine converted to burn gaseous fuel and thus pushed in both directions. The fuel mixture was not compressed before ignition (a system invented in 1801 by Philippe LeBon who developed the use of illuminating gas to light Paris), and the engine was quiet but inefficient, with a power stroke at each end of the cylinder. In 1863, the Hippomobile, with a coal gas fueled, one cylinder, internal combustion engine, made a test drive from Paris to Joinville-le-Pont, covering 18 km in 3 hours.
Lenoir was an engineer at Petiene et Cie (Petiene & Company), who supported him in his founding of the companies of Corporation Lenoir-Gautier et Cie engines Paris and Société des Moteurs Lenoir in Paris in 1859, with a capitalization of two million francs and a factory in the Rue de la Roquette, to develop the engine, and a three-wheeled carriage constructed to use it.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12935. VIAF identifies the subject as 25403189. The Library of Congress control number is nb2008011415. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1822, 1900, 1858 and 1807.
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This entry incorporates text from “Étienne Lenoir” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.