Wankel rotary engine powered thousands of aircraft. One of several problems: It spewed castor oil on its pilots.

Most car enthusiasts associate the term “rotary engine” with Felix Wankel’s invention, developed in the 1950s and most commonly associated with Mazda. However, more than half a century before the ...

After years of rumors and experimentation behind closed doors, the Mazda rotary engine is officially back. The Vision X-Coupe, a plug-in hybrid concept showcased at the 2025 Japan Mobility Show, has ...

Long before Felix Wankel became synonymous with rotary engines, an inventive Hungarian-American engineer named Stephen M. Balzer secured one of the earliest patents for a rotary-powered automobile on ...

IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more. Although numerous rotary aircraft ...

How weird and wonderful is the rotary engine, with its rebellious "why can't we do it like this" approach to automotive engineering? The rotary represents a compact, smooth, and quite mechanically ...

In a world dominated by pistons, the rotary engine was something different for motorists. It was the vision of German engineer Felix Wankel, built on the belief that the up-and-down motion of pistons ...