Jet engine technology is traced as far back as 150 BC. Advancements slowly proceeded, limited by material and aircraft design, and practical applications weren't realized until the early 20th century. Beginning with steam, to modern designs of pulsejets and compressor-based engines, higher energy fuels also helped to refine engines and widen applications. Aircraft applications began serious testing in the late 1930s, and World War II drove design and testing of higher performance engines and aircraft. By the beginning of the 1960s, both civilian and military aircraft were primarily powered by the jet engine.
Precursors Jet engines can be dated back to the invention of the aeolipile around 150 BC. This device used steam power directed through two nozzles so as to cause a sphere to spin rapidly on its axis. So far as is known, it was not used for supplying mechanical power, and the potential practical applications of this invention were not recognized. It was simply considered a curiosity. Archytas, the founder of mathematical mechanics, as described in the writings of Aulus Gellius five centuries after him, was reputed to have designed and built the first artificial, self-propelled flying device. This device was a bird-shaped model propelled by a jet of what was probably steam, said to have actually flown some 200 meters. Ottoman Lagari Hasan Çelebi is said to have taken off in 1633 with what was described to be a cone-shaped rocket and then to have glided with wings into a successful landing, winning a position in the Ottoman army. However, this was essentially a stunt. The problem was that rockets are simply too inefficient at low speeds to be useful for general aviation. The first working pulsejet was patented in 1906 by Russian engineer V.V. Karavodin, who completed a working model in 1907. The French inventor Georges Marconnet patented his valveless pulsejet engine in 1908, and Ramon Casanova, in Ripoll, Spain patented a pulsejet in Barcelona in 1917, having constructed one beginning in 1913. Robert Goddard invented a pulsejet engine in 1931, and demonstrated it on a jet-propelled bicycle. Engineer Paul Schmidt pioneered a more efficient design based on modification of the intake valves (or flaps), earning him government support from the German Air Ministry in 1933.
Some early attempts at airbreathing jet engines were hybrid designs in which an external power source first compressed air, which was then mixed with fuel and burned for jet thrust. In one such system, called a thermojet by Secondo Campini but more commonly, motorjet, the air was compressed by a fan driven by a conventional piston engine. Examples include the Caproni Campini N.1 and the Japanese Tsu-11 engine intended to power Ohka kamikaze planes towards the end of World War II. None was entirely successful and the CC.2 ended up being slower than the same design with a traditional engine and propeller combination.
In 1913, French aerospace engineer René Lorin patented a design for the world's first ramjet, but it was not possible to develop a working prototype as no existing airplane could achieve sufficient speed for it to operate, and thus the concept remained theoretical. Engineers in the 1930s realized that the maximum performance of piston engines was limited, as propulsive efficiency declined as blade tips approached the speed of sound. For engine performance to increase beyond this barrier, a way would have to be found to radically improve the design of the piston engine, or a wholly new type of powerplant would have to be developed. Gas turbine engines, commonly called "jet" engines, could do that.
The key to a practical jet engine was the gas turbine, used to extract energy from the engine itself to drive the compressor. The gas turbine was not an idea developed in the 1930s: the patent for a stationary turbine was granted to John Barber in England in 1791. The first gas turbine to successfully run self-sustainingly was built in 1903 by Norwegian engineer Ægidius Elling. Limitations in design and practical engineering and metallurgy prevented such engines reaching manufacture. The main problems were safety, reliability, weight and, especially, sustained operation. In Hungary, Albert Fonó in 1915 devised a solution for increasing the range of artillery, comprising a gun-launched projectile which was to be united with a ramjet propulsion unit. This was to make it possible to obtain a long range with low initial muzzle velocities, allowing heavy shells to be fired from relatively lightweight guns. Fonó submitted his invention to the Austro-Hungarian Army but the proposal was rejected. In 1928 he applied for a German patent on aircraft powered by supersonic ramjets, and this was awarded in 1932. The first patent for using a gas turbine to power an aircraft was filed in 1921 by Frenchman Maxime Guillaume. His engine was an axial-flow turbojet. In 1923, Edgar Buckingham of the US National Bureau of Standards published a report expressing scepticism that jet engines would be economically competitive with prop driven aircraft at the low altitudes and airspeeds of the period: "there does not appear to be, at present, any prospect whatever that jet propulsion of the sort here considered will ever be of practical value, even for military purposes." Instead, by the 1930s, the piston engine in its many different forms (rotary and static radial, air-cooled and liquid-cooled inline) was the only type of powerplant available to aircraft designers. This was acceptable as long as only low-performance aircraft were required, and indeed all that were available.
Pre World War II
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