Credited to Hungary. Wilhelm Maybach filed a patent for the same kind of spray carburetor in France on August 17, 1893, six months after the Hungarian filing, and it was mass-produced first. Edward Butler of England had patented a device on a similar principle in 1887. The Hungarian patent has the earlier date than Maybach's, so the claim is credible, but the invention is often credited to Maybach.
How it began
Donat Banki and Janos Csonka, engineers working in Budapest, applied for a patent for their carburetor on February 11, 1893. Their drawings are dated 1891, when the device was already complete. They developed it while making stationary gasoline engines work reliably for the Ganz factory, which had bought an Austrian engine maker in 1887. A well-known story says the idea came as they walked past the Museum Garden and saw a flower seller spraying her flowers with water from a nozzle sprayer.
Before it existed
An engine needs liquid fuel turned into an air-like mixture rich in oxygen before it can burn in the cylinder. The methods used until then relied on evaporating or steaming the gasoline, or on other mechanical means of breaking it up, and these did not supply fuel well enough. In 1887 the Englishman Edward Butler had patented a device on a similar principle.
How it works
The fuel is a liquid, but combustion in the cylinder needs it finely divided and mixed with plenty of air. The carburetor works like a nozzle sprayer. Air drawn into the engine passes a fine jet, pulls liquid gasoline out of it and breaks it into a mist, so that fuel and air enter the cylinder already mixed in a suitable proportion.
Who pushed back
On August 17, 1893, Wilhelm Maybach filed a patent in France for the same kind of carburetor, and the Longuemare company in Paris soon began mass production. Banki and Csonka tried to manufacture their own but lacked the capital. Andras Mechwart, head of Ganz, did not want to enter long and complicated patent lawsuits. There were hardly two cars in Hungary at the time, so the home market was small.
What lasted
The spray carburetor remained an essential part of car engines for a long time. Banki later built a high-compression engine with a double carburetor that won an award at the 1900 world exhibition. Because the invention was not defended or produced at scale in Hungary, it is often credited to Maybach.
