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Different View on Turbochargers thorughout History

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Turbochargers are viewed differently now then they have been in the past. TV commercial portray the turbocharger as a high end adaption to the typical naturally aspirated engine. Whether this performance is focused on pulling torque for trucks or high end horsepower for race cars everyone sees the turbo as a high performance system. One might wonder if the turbo was initially design for this purpose or maybe some other purpose. Alfred Büchi, the inventor of the turbo, may have had a different idea in mind when he first design the aspiration system known as the turbo charger. The turbocharger was initially design for fuel economy and engine efficiency then was later portrayed as a performance add on to modern vehicles. There is evidence in Büchi’s work that suggests this is the case and other events in the history of the internal combustion engine that may argue the fact. The main issue with the internal combustion engine was its energy transfer efficiency. A large portion of the engines energy was lost through heat and kinetic energy through the exhaust, Alfred Büchi was obsessed with the idea it could be changed. A naturally aspirated engine, also known as N/A, is the engine most cars on the market today have. It relies on the intake stroke of the engine to pull the necessary air into the cylinders and use it for the combustion. The turbo charger is in simpler words a compressor, which uses exhaust fume energy to drive a shaft supplying power to the compressor. The

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