Lycoming Engines is a major American manufacturer of
aircraft engines. With a factory in
Williamsport, Pennsylvania
Williamsport is a city in, and the county seat of, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, United States. It recorded a population of 27,754 at the 2020 Census. It is the principal city of the Williamsport Metropolitan Statistical Area, which has a popul ...
, Lycoming produces a line of
horizontally opposed, air-cooled, four, six and eight-cylinder engines including the only
FAA
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...
-certified aerobatic and
helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...
piston engines on the market.
The company has built more than 325,000 piston aircraft engines and powers more than half the world's general aviation fleet, both rotary and
fixed wing
A fixed-wing aircraft is a heavier-than-air flying machine, such as an airplane, which is capable of flight using wings that generate lift caused by the aircraft's forward airspeed and the shape of the wings. Fixed-wing aircraft are distin ...
. Lycoming is an operating division of
Avco
Avco Corporation is a subsidiary of Textron which operates Textron Systems Corporation
and Lycoming.
History
The Aviation Corporation was formed on March 2, 1929, to prevent a takeover of CAM-24 airmail service operator Embry-Riddle Compa ...
Corporation, itself a subsidiary of
Textron
Textron Inc. is an American industrial conglomerate based in Providence, Rhode Island. Textron's subsidiaries include Arctic Cat, Bell Textron, Textron Aviation (which itself includes the Beechcraft, and Cessna brands), and Lycoming Engin ...
.
History
Sewing machines, bicycles and fashion
![Demorest Machine](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Demorest_Machine.jpg)
Lycoming dates its founding to 1845 by "
Madame Ellen Curtis Demorest".
However, the early history of the company (especially prior to 1860) is unclear;
biographer Ishbel Ross notes that the marriage of Ellen Louise Curtis to
William Jennings Demorest took place in 1858, somewhat later than the purported date of establishment of the company.
A few years later in
New York, between c. 1860 and 1887, the Demorests published fashion magazines and operated the Demorest Fashion and Sewing-Machine Company (sometimes known as the Demorest Manufacturing Company). They produced "Madame Demorest" and "Bartlett & Demorest" sewing machines and sold Ellen Demorest's innovative paper patterns for dressmaking.
During this period, Ellen Demorest patented several fashion accessories,
while her husband patented improvements to sewing machines
and an apparatus for the
vulcanization
Vulcanization (British: Vulcanisation) is a range of processes for hardening rubbers. The term originally referred exclusively to the treatment of natural rubber with sulfur, which remains the most common practice. It has also grown to includ ...
of rubber.
Around 1883, Gerrit S. Scofield & Frank M. Scofield (advertising agents from New York) bought the Demorest brand and the sewing machine business (the Demorests retained the magazine business), and constructed a factory in
Williamsport, Pennsylvania
Williamsport is a city in, and the county seat of, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, United States. It recorded a population of 27,754 at the 2020 Census. It is the principal city of the Williamsport Metropolitan Statistical Area, which has a popul ...
(in
Lycoming County
Lycoming County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 114,188. Its county seat
A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. ...
).
At the urging of the newly established Williamsport Board of Trade, citizens invested in the new manufacturing facility, which employed 250 people.
The factory produced 50 to 60 sewing machines per day.
With the development of the "New York Bicycle" in 1891 (designed by employee S. H. Ellis), the company diversified its product offerings.
Until the early 1900s, the factory produced
sewing machines,
bicycles,
typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...
s, opera chairs and other products.
Engine manufacture
By 1907, the manufacture of sewing machines had become unprofitable for Demorest, and the company was sold and restructured as the Lycoming Foundry and Machine Company, shifting its focus toward
automobile
A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods.
The year 1886 is regarde ...
engine manufacture.
In 1910, the company supplied its first automobile engine to
Velie
Velie was a brass era American automobile brand produced by the Velie Motors Corporation in Moline, Illinois from 1908 to 1928. The company was founded by and named for Willard Velie, a maternal grandson of John Deere.
Velie founded Velie Ca ...
,
and during the early post-
World-War-I era, the company was a major supplier to Auburn (which produced the
Auburn,
Cord
Cord or CORD may refer to:
People
* Alex Cord (1933–2021), American actor and writer
* Chris Cord (born 1940), American racing driver
* Errett Lobban Cord (1894–1974) American industrialist
* Ronnie Cord (1943–1986), Brazilian singer
* Co ...
, and
Duesenberg lines). By 1920, Lycoming was producing 60,000 engines a year, with a 2,000-strong workforce. To handle the capacity, a new foundry complex was built in
Williamsport that year.
Eventually Lycoming became Auburn's principal supplier, and in 1927
Errett Lobban Cord bought the company,
placing it under his Auburn Manufacturing umbrella group. Among the engines Lycoming produced for Cord was an L-head
straight-eight engine of 298.5 cu. in. displacement that produced 125 horsepower. This was used in the Cord L-29. Lycoming also produced a double overhead cam straight 8 used in the legendary Duesenberg J series. This powerplant produced 265 horsepower, six times the power of a contemporary Model A Ford. A supercharged version, generating 325 horsepower, was installed in the Duesenberg SJ and SSJ models.
In 1929, Lycoming produced its first aviation engine, the nine-cylinder
R-680 radial
Radial is a geometric term of location which may refer to:
Mathematics and Direction
* Vector (geometric), a line
* Radius, adjective form of
* Radial distance, a directional coordinate in a polar coordinate system
* Radial set
* A bearing f ...
.
This was a fairly successful design, and was used widely in light
aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engine ...
, including Cord's
Travel Air
The Travel Air Manufacturing Company was an aircraft manufacturer established in Wichita, Kansas, United States in January 1925 by Clyde Cessna, Walter Beech, and Lloyd Stearman.
History
The company initially built a series of sporting and tr ...
.
In the 1930s, Lycoming made a number of attempts to develop successful high-power aircraft engines. The
O-1230 was Lycoming's attempt to produce an engine based on the
United States Army Air Corps
The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical r ...
hyper engine
The hyper engine was a 1930s study project by the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) to develop a high-performance aircraft engine that would be equal to or better than the aircraft and engines then under development in Europe. The project goal ...
concept, and used a variety of features to produce nearly of
engine displacement
Engine displacement is the measure of the cylinder volume swept by all of the pistons of a piston engine, excluding the combustion chambers. It is commonly used as an expression of an engine's size, and by extension as a loose indicator of the ...
. However, by the O-1230's entry into service, it had been surpassed by other designs and the investment was not recouped. Another attempt was made to rescue the design by stacking two O-1230s to make the
H engine
An H engine is a piston engine comprising two separate flat engines (complete with separate crankshafts), most often geared to a common output shaft. The name "H engine" is due to the engine blocks resembling a letter "H" when viewed from the fro ...
H-2470 but the only design to use it, the
Vultee XP-54
The Vultee XP-54 ''Swoose Goose'' was a prototype fighter built by the Vultee Aircraft Company for the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF).
Design and development
Vultee submitted a proposal in response to a U.S. Army Air Corps request fo ...
, never entered production. The
Curtiss XF14C was originally intended to be powered by the H-2470, but the engine's poor performance led to the adoption of an alternative radial engine on the prototype. (The XF14C did not enter production.)
Undeterred by the O-1230/H-2470's failure, Lycoming turned to an even larger design, the 36-cylinder
XR-7755, the largest aviation
piston engine ever built. This design also experienced problems, and was only ready for use at the very end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, when the aviation world was turning to
turbojet
The turbojet is an airbreathing jet engine which is typically used in aircraft. It consists of a gas turbine with a propelling nozzle. The gas turbine has an air inlet which includes inlet guide vanes, a compressor, a combustion chamber, an ...
s and
turboprop
A turboprop is a turbine engine that drives an aircraft propeller.
A turboprop consists of an intake, reduction gearbox, compressor, combustor, turbine, and a propelling nozzle. Air enters the intake and is compressed by the compressor. ...
engines to power future large aircraft.
There was apparently some interest in using it on the
Convair B-36 Peacemaker
The Convair B-36 "Peacemaker" is a strategic bomber that was built by Convair and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) from 1949 to 1959. The B-36 is the largest mass-produced Reciprocating engine, piston-engined aircraft ever built. It ...
bomber
A bomber is a military combat aircraft designed to attack ground and naval targets by dropping air-to-ground weaponry (such as bombs), launching torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped from an air ...
, but the 28-cylinder
Pratt & Whitney R-4360 ''Wasp Major'' four-bank radial was used instead.
Through the 1920s and -30s, Lycoming had still been supplying automotive manufacturers with engines. However, these clients each slowly went out of business or switched to
Continental
Continental may refer to:
Places
* Continent, the major landmasses of Earth
* Continental, Arizona, a small community in Pima County, Arizona, US
* Continental, Ohio, a small town in Putnam County, US
Arts and entertainment
* ''Continental'' ( ...
engines for their vehicles. By 1931, the company was supplying automotive engines to only three companies:
Auburn,
Cord
Cord or CORD may refer to:
People
* Alex Cord (1933–2021), American actor and writer
* Chris Cord (born 1940), American racing driver
* Errett Lobban Cord (1894–1974) American industrialist
* Ronnie Cord (1943–1986), Brazilian singer
* Co ...
and
Duesenburg, still all under the control of
Cord
Cord or CORD may refer to:
People
* Alex Cord (1933–2021), American actor and writer
* Chris Cord (born 1940), American racing driver
* Errett Lobban Cord (1894–1974) American industrialist
* Ronnie Cord (1943–1986), Brazilian singer
* Co ...
.
These companies closed their doors in 1937, after which Lycoming switched to exclusively designing and producing engines for aviation.
In the meantime, the Smith Engineering Corporation, an early manufacturer of controllable pitch propellers had been purchased by Cord and moved to Williamsport.
In 1939 Cord re-organized all of his aviation holdings into the AVCO group, at which point the engine manufacturing company became "AVCO Lycoming". It also leased the government-owned
Stratford Army Engine Plant in
Stratford, Connecticut and produced
Wright
Wright is an occupational surname originating in England. The term 'Wright' comes from the circa 700 AD Old English word 'wryhta' or 'wyrhta', meaning worker or shaper of wood. Later it became any occupational worker (for example, a shipwright i ...
radials under license. After the war, this plant was converted to produce the
T53 turboshaft
A turboshaft engine is a form of gas turbine that is optimized to produce shaftpower rather than jet thrust. In concept, turboshaft engines are very similar to turbojets, with additional turbine expansion to extract heat energy from the exhaust ...
engine, one of its more successful designs. From this point on the piston and
turbine
A turbine ( or ) (from the Greek , ''tyrbē'', or Latin ''turbo'', meaning vortex) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work. The work produced by a turbine can be used for generating ...
engine lines remained separate, with the piston lines being built in the original Williamsport factories, and turbines in Stratford.
By 1961, Lycoming produced 600 to 700 engines per month.
Its most successful post-war products were a series of
air-cooled
Air-cooled engines rely on the circulation of air directly over heat dissipation fins or hot areas of the engine to cool them in order to keep the engine within operating temperatures. In all combustion engines, a great percentage of the heat ge ...
flat-4
A flat-four engine, also known as a horizontally opposed-four engine, is a four-cylinder piston engine with two banks of cylinders lying on opposite sides of a common crankshaft. The most common type of flat-four engine is the boxer-four engine, ...
and
flat-6
A flat-six engine, also known as a horizontally opposed-six, is a six-cylinder piston engine with three cylinders on each side of a central crankshaft. The most common type of flat-six engine is the boxer-six engine, where each pair of opposed cy ...
general aviation
General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations with the exception of commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services ...
engines. Most famous among these are the
O-235 and
O-360 four-cylinder engines, and the
O-540 six-cylinder engine. Many light aircraft are powered by versions of these engines, with power ratings in the range. Engines in this series also include the
O-320 four-,
O-580 six- and
O-720 eight-cylinder engines, and the advanced
turbocharged and
fuel-injected
Fuel injection is the introduction of fuel in an internal combustion engine, most commonly automotive engines, by the means of an injector. This article focuses on fuel injection in reciprocating piston and Wankel rotary engines.
All com ...
TIGO-541 variant of the venerable (carbureted) O-540.
In the early 1980s, the general aviation market suddenly diminished and Lycoming's piston engine business was significantly impacted. Attempts were made to move some of the turbine production to Williamsport, but this led to a series of
quality control problems and eventually it was abandoned.
Another attempt to rescue Williamsport was made in introducing the "radical" ''SCORE'' engine, a
Wankel engine
The Wankel engine (, ) is a type of internal combustion engine using an eccentric rotary design to convert pressure into rotating motion. It was invented by German engineer Felix Wankel, and designed by German engineer Hanns-Dieter Paschke. ...
originally developed through a joint venture between
Curtiss-Wright
The Curtiss-Wright Corporation is a manufacturer and services provider headquartered in Davidson, North Carolina, with factories and operations in and outside the United States. Created in 1929 from the consolidation of Curtiss, Wright, and v ...
and
John Deere. Curtiss-Wright lost interest in the design just as it was maturing and sold its interests in the project to Deere, which brought in Lycoming to sell the developed engine into the aviation markets. It was guaranteed a startup run by
Cessna, also owned by Textron. Just as production was ready to start, Cessna announced it was halting its small-aircraft business for an indefinite period, and SCORE was cancelled. The remains of the Deere licenses were later purchased by Rotary Power International, which briefly produced a version.
Textron purchased the company in 1985.
In 1994, Textron sold the Lycoming Turbine Engine Division, located in
Stratford, Connecticut, to
AlliedSignal, who merged it with the
Garrett Engine Division of AlliedSignal as part of AlliedSignal Aerospace, later becoming part of
Honeywell Aerospace
Honeywell Aerospace is a manufacturer of aircraft engines and avionics, as well as a producer of auxiliary power units (APUs) and other aviation products. Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, it is a division of the Honeywell International conglom ...
in 1999.
[Leyes, p. 725] Textron retained piston engine production in Williamsport.
Products
The aircraft piston engine prefixes are:
* A—Aerobatic (dry sump)
* AE—Aerobatic (wet sump)
* E—Electronic
* G—Geared (reduction gear)
* H—Helicopter
* I—Fuel injected
* L—Left hand rotation crankshaft
* M—Designed for unmanned drone
* O—Opposed cylinders
* R—Radial cylinders
* S—Supercharged
* T—Turbocharged
* V—Vertical installation (usually for helicopters)
* X—
X-type engine
* Y—Experimental
Piston engines
Turbine engines
See also
*
Continental Motors, Inc.
Continental Aerospace Technologies is an aircraft engine manufacturer located at the Brookley Aeroplex in Mobile, Alabama, United States. It was originally spun off from automobile engine manufacturer Continental Motors Company in 1929 and own ...
*
Rotax
Rotax is the brand name for a range of internal combustion engines developed and manufactured by the Austrian company BRP-Rotax GmbH & Co KG (until 2016 BRP-Powertrain GmbH & Co. KG), in turn owned by the Canadian Bombardier Recreational Produc ...
*
Vericor Power Systems
References
Notes
Bibliography
*
*
External links
Official website
{{Textron
Textron
Aircraft engine manufacturers of the United States
Motor vehicle engine manufacturers
Williamsport, Pennsylvania
American companies established in 1845
Manufacturing companies established in 1845
1845 establishments in Pennsylvania
Manufacturing companies based in Pennsylvania
1985 mergers and acquisitions
Engine manufacturers of the United States