A flat engine is an internal combustion engine with multiple pistons that move in a horizontal plane. Typically, the layout has cylinders arranged in two banks on either side of a single crankshaft and is sometimes known as the boxer, or horizontally opposed engine. The concept was patented in 1896 by engineer Karl Benz. It should not be confused with the opposed-piston engine, in which each cylinder has a piston at both ends and no cylinder head.
Another widely used form of flat engine consists of a straight engine with two, three, four or more cylinders canted 90 degrees into the horizontal plane, however this is not generally considered significantly different from other straight engines.
Read more about Flat Engine: Configuration, Notable Flat Engines
Famous quotes containing the words flat and/or engine:
“Twenty-two years ago Judge [then-Senator Stephen] Douglas and I first became acquainted. We were both young then; he a trifle younger than I. Even then, we were both ambitious; I, perhaps, quite as much so as he. With me, the race of ambition has been a failure—a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid success.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is perfect, the engineer is nobody. Every new step in improving the engine restricts one more act of the engineer,—unteaches him.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)