Originally, in the 1800’s, the term engines and the term motors were used to differentiate between the well known steam engines and ‘new‘ design of power-plant called gasoline or diesel engines. The reasoning behind this was that gasoline or diesel engines were new at the time. In order for people to be able to distinguish between the two in the early stages of use, the terms were not interchangeable.
motors" "engines
An engine is a device or machine designed to produce force, power or motion from another source of energy such as gasoline, diesel fuel or steam, and some modern fuels being experimented with as alternative fuel sources. As steam engines became less popular and started to phase out, the terms started to take on separate meanings.
Now we generally associate the term engine with a car or truck or any vehicle powered by the above fossil fuels (gasoline-diesel). However, the term motor applies as well as the term engine. Some folks still refer to car engines as car motors. In reality the term engine is the preferred term used today when speaking of the power-plant in a car, truck or a piece of construction equipment.
The term motor has become popular to describe many other types of engines. Specifically we call engines that use electricity, “electric motors”. In fact the term electric engine may be confusing to much of the population since they are referred to as electric motors exclusively now. For instance we call the items that operate your electric windows, “electric window motors”, or the actuators for your electric door locks, “electric solenoid motors”. Modern cars have electric devices operating all sorts of items you probably have no knowledge of, and we call them ‘motors’ since the majority of them are tiny electric motors.
Lots of large construction equipment are powered by electricity now, and the power-plants are called ‘electric motors’. Take the San Francisco trains for example, they are powered by ‘electric motors’. When we speak of Hybrid cars, there is a distinct difference between the gasoline engines used as part of the power-drive system and the part that makes it a hybrid, which is a collection of (car) batteries that provide the power to an electric motor. In essence a hybrid car is a marriage of an electric motor and a gasoline engine.
As recently as the 60’s people called car engines, motors. As someone who had the great fortune to be a teenager in the ’60’s, when (real) muscle cars were alive and well, we often called our engines, motors. A great example would be the ‘big block’ Chevy engine in the 60’s, which was 427 cubic inches of raw power was called the “rat motor” by racing enthusiasts in every type of racing in the day. I still call it a rat motor, but if I was to need to buy one now, when I placed my order, I would use the term big block 427 Chevy engine.
A term less used in the ’60’s was the term “mouse motor“, which was the nickname we gave the “small block” Chevy engines. Small block is a very common term, still being used. The fact that engines with the tremendous size of a Big Block are less popular at least in cars due to fuel efficiency and emissions, are being reintroduced in a mild mannered forms in the motorhomes and truck lines, and are completely different from the Rat Motors of my era, and are called engines now.
It seems that the two terms usually have the same meaning when referring to fossil fuel engines. Parts people know the difference, even if the wrong term is used. It seems to me the younger crowd uses the word engine almost exclusively unless it is a component that uses electricity. What about your starter motor? No one calls it a starter engine, but both terms have the same meaning.
Once again, when the electric motor appeared, people saw a distinct difference between it and the steam engine. The steam engine had an obvious source of energy in its fuel, the source of energy of the electric motor was less clear, being supplied mysteriously from a battery or generator by means of wires.
By the time that vehicles driven by internal combustion engines had begun to appear in any numbers, at the very end of the century, both words had become well established in common usage. The power plant was obviously an engine, which consumed fuel to provide motive power. But why the conveyance as a whole was termed a motor vehicle is less obvious. The mere fact of it moving was obviously not sufficient, that was hardly a new idea, after all. Perhaps the need for a more elegant word was needed, and being able to distinguish the gasoline automobile as a system from anything that exhausted steam and soot, such as the early steam-driven road vehicles like the Stanley Steamer.
Since the dawn of the twentieth century, the two words have moved together from very different origins. But when new forms of propulsive devices came along, chance decided which was to be applied in a particular case. Aeroplanes were obviously powered by engines, since the earliest ones were taken over directly from petrol engines of the kind that drove cars. Though there seems to be no clear evidence for the choice.
I could go into detail on the origins of the words and some of the historical uses of engines or motors. For instance a water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, the development of hydropower. In the Middle Ages, waterwheels were used as tools to power factories throughout different counties. The alternatives were the windmill and human and animal power. The most common use of the water wheel was to mill flour in mills, but other uses included foundry work and machining, and pounding linen for use in the manufacture of paper.
That’s about all I can think of in relation to what is the difference between, engines and motors and some of the different uses from ancient civilizations to modern times. Since we are an Engine Supply Company for motors” “engines, we only sell engines or motors that go into cars, trucks and nearly everything that uses gasoline, diesel or hybrid power. GotEngines.com @ 1-941-269-8284.
