A PENNINGTON FOR THEM

I’ve just been reading PUB’s interesting column about EJ Pennington’s motorcycle and the ignition system thereof. I might be missing something, but Pennington’s efforts seem to exert a continuing fascination for reasons that defeat me a bit. OK, it’s easy to be sniffy about early efforts in any field of design and in fairness it was an attempt to build a machine from the ground up and not an adapted bicycle. He was a pioneer after all and if he hit on the idea, counterintuitively, of advancing the spark before TDC then good for him.

Apart from that, is there any real evidence that one of these machines ever actually ran under its own power? Connecting the pistons directly to the rear wheel, along steam locomotive lines, might be fine ( just) if it was steam powered. However, unlike steam propulsion, I/C engines produce zero torque at zero rpm and not much at low rpm, especially the early examples. Also flywheels need both effective mass and sufficient rotational velocity to carry the piston(s) through the combustion cycle as well as damping out power impulses. A flywheel integral with the rear wheel seems unlikely to provide either, unless somehow the machine could be got up and running and once running was almost insanely fast.

There appear to be no brakes and the pedalling gear doesn’t look much help either. Other pioneers seem to have grasped the necessity for an effective flywheel combined with gearing of some sort. There were decades of industrial engine practice to work from after all.

On a lighter note, a few years ago there was a pub in Bridgwater which had a sign bearing an illustration of an early motorcycle leaping over the suitably amazed Edwardian / Victorian occupants of a boat on a river. The machine was clearly a Pennington and I suspect the picture was lifted from some original publicity material, thus showing Pennington’s skill with advertising if not engineering. The pub was called The Hope and was recently demolished. So, no hope for The Hope or EJP’s brainchild… Ian Keeton, member 6998

I’m glad that you found some interest in the article, even if you don’t understand the fascination. Actually, I’m not sure that Pennington’s efforts do exert a continuing fascination, but as he was amongst the earliest of I/C motorcycle pioneers he will get mentioned in any historical review back to those days. I happen to have a particular fascination with the earliest machinery, which I hope also provides a bit of interest for readers of the column. I have also noticed that writers are quick to ridicule Pennington in particular, mostly copying Eric Walford’s comments of 1930ish. But much of the ridicule is aimed wrongly, and that was really my point. Indeed quite a few of your own assertions are also in error, for most of us can no longer really imagine the circumstances of those days. I/C engines produce no torque at zero rpm and not much at low rpm? Well, mine broke my wrist at virtually no rpm, and engines of his era only ran at a few hundred rpm! The de Dions of the late 1890s were the first to run well over 1000rpm. So quite a few early experimenters tried the direct drive, including Hildebrand and Wolfmüller, and Holden, as well as Pennington, all of whom tried to get their ‘gear’ right by using small wheels (a 20-inch wheel, at 500rpm equates to about 30mph). And they did work. The Wolfmüller finished well up in one of the 1890s intercity races, whilst the Holden was sold into the 20th century, and Rex Judd rode one in the 1938 Pioneer Run! As for the Penningtons, they also ran, being demonstrated on Coventry’s cycle track (because prior to the 1896 Emancipation Run it was illegal to exceed 4mph on the road – and that with three people, one walking ahead). Another did start on the Emancipation run, although it probably did not go very far. So, there were decades of engine practice, after all? Well, steam engine practice, yes, which is why it loomed so large. But the Otto cycle itself was less than 20 years old (patented 1876) when Pennington started his work, and Daimler had only incorporated it into a petrol engine such as we might recognise a few years earlier (1885, achieving an outstanding 800rpm). Such I/C engines as the pioneers might have seen would probably have been gas engines (run on town gas), heavy, smooth, and governed to slow, constant, speed; for the first 5 to 10 years most car engines were also governed to run, devoid of a throttle, at a constant speed. One such designer had never seen a petrol engine when he made his first. He recorded his expectation of a sweet running little unit, and was shocked and frightened by the bad tempered fire-spitting monster he experienced when it first started. I could go on, but hopefully that has reset the background those guys were working in. As for the pub sign of ‘The Hope’ that you mention, it was undoubtedly an illustration that Pennington used frequently in his publicity. I only wish I had visited the pub and got a picture of it and the sign! Jacqueline Bickerstaff