A carburetor is a device that blends air and fuel for an internal combustion engine. It is sometimes colloquially shortened to carb in North America or carby in Australia.To carburate is to blend the air and fuel or to equipment (an engine) with a carburetor for that purpose.
Carburetors have largely been supplanted in the automotive industry by fuel injection. They are still common on small engines for lawn mowers, rototillers, and other equipment.
History & Development
The carburetor was invented by an Italian, Luigi De Cristoforis, in 1876. A carburetor was developed by Enrico Bernardi at the University of Padua in 1882, for his Motrice Pia, the first petrol combustion engine (one cylinder, 121.6 cc) prototyped on 5 August 1882.A carburetor was among the early patents by Karl Benz as he developed internal combustion engines and their components.
Early carburetors were the surface carburetor type, in which air is charged with fuel by being passed over the surface of gasoline.In 1885, Wilhelm Maybach and Gottlieb Daimler developed a float carburetor for their engine based on the atomizer nozzle.The Daimler-Maybach carburetor was copied extensively, leading to patent lawsuits, but British courts rejected the Daimler company's claim of priority in favor of Edward Butler's 1884 spray carburetor used on his Petrol Cycle.Hungarian engineers Janos Csonka and Donat Banki patented a carburetor for a stationary engine in 1893.
