The First Internal Combustion Engine in History Has Roared Again

In 1853, in Florence, Father Eugenio Barsanti and engineer Felice Matteucci filed the project for the first internal combustion engine in history. It was a single-cylinder engine with five horsepower, created and used at the workshops of the Maria Antonietta Railway Station in Florence to power a drill and a shear.

The engine was a three-stroke, gravity-atmospheric type with delayed action. It worked by compressing a mixture of air and gas inside a cylinder. A spark would then ignite the combustion, generating an explosion that pushed the piston. The linear force produced was then converted into rotary motion via a crank and connecting rod system—exactly the same process still used in modern internal combustion engines.

The 1:2.5 scale model of the Barsanti and Matteucci engine, part of the Museo Nicolis collection.

It is incredible that such an important and innovative technical invention remained in oblivion for so long, forgotten partly due to the attribution of the first internal combustion engine to Nikolaus Otto. However, the German inventor developed the four-stroke technology almost a decade later, filing the patent in 1862.

With these facts in mind, the Club Moto d’Epoca Fiorentino, Federated ASI (Automobilismo Storico Italiano), decided to bring the original idea back to life by faithfully reproducing the 1853 prototype. 5,000 hours of work and months of research—conducted in documents found at the Accademia dei Georgofili, the Ximenian Observatory, the Galileo Museum, and the State Archives—led to a seamless project. After two years, the Barsanti and Matteucci engine has roared back to life.

The ignition took place in mid-January 2025 in Florence at Palazzo Vecchio, the city's municipal headquarters, with the rightful pride of preserving motor culture. The project respected the originality of the sources, documents, and testimonies, ensuring that great inventions become part of the public heritage.

After over 5,000 hours of work and months of research to retrieve the original documentation, the Barsanti and Matteucci engine was started in Piazza della Signoria in Florence.

The internal combustion engine is a heritage that Europe should be proud of. The Florentines deserve praise for commemorating this technological advantage of over 150 years at a time when, with astonishing and dangerous shortsightedness, ecological transition thinking focuses solely on electric mobility. Today, as in the past, there are brilliant engineers like Barsanti and Matteucci, capable of minimizing the environmental impact of internal combustion engines and adapting them for the use of ecological fuels.

The ASI conference at Palazzo Vecchio highlights the importance of an extraordinary invention that today faces an uncertain future.