during coffee brake at work the other day. Why is it called a steam engine and not a steam motor? Does the engine include the boiler? Does anybody know?
Isn?t it called the engine room onboard a boat and not the motor room. An echo from the steamboat days perhaps.
By the way it is the same in Swedish, ångmaskin not ångmotor.
Cheers Ulf Bengtsson
No idea, but the same applies to cars. We have motor cars which are powered by engines, unless they are electric in which case they are called motors. I believe that engines in America are called motors which further confuses the issue.
Cliff Coggin Kent UK
The difference I see between "engine" and "motor" is that motors always seem smaller. Motorbikes have motors, and they go "Bzzzzz". Vacuum cleaners have motors that also go "Bzzzzz". While cars and 'planes and so on have engines that go "Vrrrrrr".
On the other hand, really really big things have "power plants" that go "Mmmmmmmmm".
ABS
LOL! I've got a car that goes "RrrrrRrrrrRrrrr...rrrr " Then again, it has a flat battery and won't start....
ChrisH
To me motors are electrical and engines mean combustion.. except for Jetex motors, oh and software graphics 'engines'.
OK forget it I don't know
-- terryk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted from the RCGroups.com Discussion Forums. Visit us at
We had the same discussion over in RMR (Rocket Motors vs Rocket Engines) 10 years back - here is a good answer:-
---------------------------------------------------------- Steve Randall G8KHW snipped-for-privacy@btinternet.com UKRA #1072 Level 2
Perhaps because Europe started off the engine thing, we never got around to turning 'engine' into 'motor' the way the USA did, and we still do refer to engines as engines and motors as motors.
Refer to old marine books where diesel-electric propulsion went into 'motor ships' only, straight diesel powered ships were just that, never motor propelled.
Think of the languages in Europe that have 'motor' in their language which really refers to internal combustion propulsion...
Peter
-- Peter & Rita Forbes snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Engine pages for preservation info:
That reminds me of a story about a man from the middle of Sweden, Elis in Taserud. He was/is well known for his whit and sharp tongue. He has lived, he is not a made up person but perhaps some of the stories told about him are.
One of the men that had migrated to the US came back home to the village for a short holiday in the 1920?ies. Ha had done very well in America and had become rich and bragged a lot about it. When Elis showed him around in the village he said that his farm was so big that it took a whole day to drive around it in his car.
Elis answered: ?No big deal, we have got that kind of cars in Sweden too?.?
Is that a true story or do you have that replanted in UK soil also?
/Ulf B
ChrisH wrote:
We tell the same story about Texans here in the U.S.
Cheers,
Kelley
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