Don't often get the chance to spot one of these babies with the lid off, but there are no V-8s out there any bigger that I've seen and this must surely have been a ship's diesel engine. The crank-shaft nowhere to be seen, what appears likely a cam-shaft to drive what might either have been valves ~ noting the sleeves for push-rods ~ or else mechanical fuel-injectors.
Reciprocating engines would first have been built on this scale, generally for raising water out of mines likes those in Cornwall or elsewhere in the UK... and powered by steam whether by means of condensation or compression. Such large displacement engines would afterwards be adapted as horizontal engines that powered cotton and woollen mills in place of water-wheels in the north of England.
What I most like about these diesels is that they run at around the same low speed, some barely on throw of a piston per second, and must sound not dissimilar. They more than any other reciprocating engine truly show how internal combustion would replace external ~ in a boiler ~ by relatable and surprisingly simple means. (Despite the devil as ever being in the detail, the workhorses in any number of factories were even simpler engines fed by coal-gas).
If you want to see one of Diesel's original prototypes you can do so not far from the scrap-yard pictured here, at the bus and truck museum in Leyland. Its inventor took a ferry one day between England and France, and has yet to arrive. It is suggested that the reason he (was) disappeared was because he pointed out that his engines would run on anything, including corn or peanut oil... which will not have gone down well in Texas, for instance.
At one time I would have regarded that as fanciful, whereas nowadays it would not at all surprise me. We battle, as St Paul said, with powers and principalities beyond what diesel engines might produce.
(Ed. He didn't actually mention diesel engines.)
