Historical Trend and Future Scope of Ship Propulsion with Reference to Diesel Plant

The history of each branch of technology is postulated to have its particular intrinsic laws of development. It is now generally agreed that technology in general is presently undergoing a fundamental change toward a new era in which artificial means do jobs in place of the human brain. Natural inferences are that ship automation should be strengthened further. The history of ship propulsion is relatively independent from the history of propulsive prime-movers; the end of the era of rotating propellers is not yet in sight. However, the recent trend of building many types of voluminous-cargo vessels such as the container ship is understandable as an example of the general pattern in technological developments, e.g. the cargo carrying function is largely separated from the buoyant hull and is transferred to the deck, resulting in energy saving. The proper domain of the ship among various means of transportation is the low-speed, highly energy-efficient domain. The history of the internal combustion engine is briefly reviewed and the soundness of the basic construction of the diesel engine is confirmed. The fundamental factor in the internal combustion engine is postulated as “scavenging followed by compression”. It is then inferred that the introduction of turbocharging is the functional differentiation and re-integration in the internal-combustion engine's fundamental factor. It is concluded that the study of the history of technology from the viewpoint of the intrinsic laws of development is necessary for the formation of correct overviews and right strategies.