PISTONAIRE on Instagram: "How the Internal Combustion Engine Was Born The internal combustion engine didn’t pop up overnight — it took multiple inventors across decades. The earliest concept goes back to 1860, when Étienne Lenoir built the first commercially successful gas engine. But the real breakthrough came in 1876, when Nikolaus Otto invented the 4-stroke “Otto Cycle” engine — intake, compression, power, exhaust. That layout still powers most gasoline engines today. Later, Gottlieb Daimler