How did the General Purpose Technology ’Internal Combustion Engine’ contribute to the Third Industrial Revolution: The Power Engines.

Abstract

This paper is about the internal combustion engine (ICE) becoming in the 1900-1950 period the driver of massive novelty. We apply the concept of the General Purpose Technology (GPT) of the late 1990s, a culmination of many evolutionary views in innovation-thinking. A GPT by definition considers the technical, social, and economic effects of meta-technologies like steam-technology and electric technology. Adding the construct of the General Purpose Engine (GPE), this paper uses Schumpeter’s concept of ’cluster on innovations’ and the Life Cycle concept to explore the development of the Internal Combustion Engine and create insight in the nature of the GPT-ICE. Next we place the GPT-ICE in the broader context of industrialization and its revolutions. However, the concept of the Third Industrial Revolution as a period of economic transformation is rather vague. Some historians consider it in relation to the Information & Computing-technologies (ICT) and/or the Information/Digital Age. This contrasts with the First Industrial Revolution (1760-1850), being about the Power of Heat, and the Second Industrial Revolution (1850-1920), being about the Power of Lightning. What all theses developments have in common are the power-generation technologies (ie steam, electricity, ICE). We conclude that In the same perspective, seen from a technological point of view, the Third Industrial Revolution (1920-1950) is about the Power of Combustion (GPE-ICE).