Pulsejet

A pulsejet is a type of jet engine in which combustion occurs in intermittent pulses rather than continuously, and it can run with few or no moving parts. In a valved pulsejet, one way valves let air and fuel into a combustion chamber, where ignition forces the valves shut and drives the hot gases out through a tailpipe to produce thrust, a cycle that repeats dozens of times each second; a valveless design achieves the same pulsing action through the shape of its ducting alone. Early patents for the concept date to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including a steam version from the Russian inventor Nikolaj Afanasievich Teleshov in 1867 and a working engine patented by the Russian engineer V. V. Karavodin in 1906 and completed in 1907, with the French inventor Georges Marconnet patenting a valveless version in 1908. The pulsejet became infamous during the Second World War as the power plant of Nazi Germany's Argus As 109-014 engine, which drove the V-1 flying bomb and earned the nicknames buzz bomb and doodlebug for its distinctive droning sound, first flying under its own power on December 10, 1942.