Charging is almost as old as the internal combustion engine itself. Only the atmospheric gas engine, as the name suggests, can be clearly separated. But, for example, Carl Benz built two-stroke engines before his success with his three-wheeler. And how should one judge the pre-compression of this engine? Well, it is mainly used for purging, but if the combustion chamber opposite the exhaust is closed a little earlier than the transfer port, it is already charging.

Undoubtedly knowing the principle of the two-stroke engine, both Gottlieb Daimler and Rudolf Diesel flirted with this compression below the piston or carried out tests. Daimler, the master of all patent specifications, even had this idea secured. The crankshaft with the comparatively huge crank webs, which is still known today from the two-stroke engine, was already available at Daimler. A certain pre-compression is only possible by reducing the crankcase volume.

Attempts by Daimler and later also by Diesel are documented, but the former wanted a small and light drive, the latter a particularly economical drive, for which this type of supercharging was simply not suitable. In 1905, Alfred Büchi received a patent for the first turbocharger, which he was not able to successfully demonstrate in practice until 1925. That was also the time when Diesel's engine first benefited from this technology.

No, vehicle engines were out of the question. It was more the big engines produced by MAN, among others, which charging helped to achieve more power. Up until that time, the diesel engine did not play a major role in trucks, not to mention in cars. The aircraft propulsion system is where the supercharging would have been urgently needed. Here one struggles with a lack of air and thus a lack of oxygen at higher altitudes.

But not even the mostly technology-driven war brought the charging into the aircraft, that is to say not in significant quantities during the First World War. The (unofficial) high-altitude flight world record for BMW in 1919 was achieved with a carburetor suction engine. It was only when the ban on aircraft engines was lifted long after this war that Daimler openly devoted itself to this technology, along with direct fuel injection. This was not the case with racing cars, which had occasionally experimented with superchargers since the beginning of the century.

It was thanks to two famous designers, Ferdinand Porsche and Paul Daimler, the son of Gottlieb Daimler, that charging caused a sensation in German racing cars in the thirties. The twenties saw some movement in internal combustion engines. For racing use, the enormous increase in displacement to over 20 liters was over. One was now looking for other options, in addition to charging, e.g. also through the first DOHC valve trains.

And here is the ultimate solution for the pre World War II era. Both racing cars were eventually named 'Silberpfeile', both using Roots blowers. Here the Mercedes engine, characteristic screeching when you step on the accelerator. For that reason alone, it may have overcome some competitors.

Its fan is double-bladed and was first used in a Mercedes engine in 1921 under Paul Daimler. The compressed air it produces flows through the ascending flow carburetor and takes gasoline mist with it. In the picture, the first six-cylinder with compressor from 1924, 4 liter displacement and depending on the position of the accelerator pedal 52 kW (70 hp) or 74 kW (100 hp) at 3100 rpm.