Ninety Years of Cummins Engine Development
2009-08-12 Source：english.chinabuses.com
Though not of Cummins Engines, the first applicable Cummins diesel engine was ready in 1931, but Clessie Lyle Cummins started designing and experimenting with the first prototypes in 1919, having founded the Cummins Engine Company in the year with the financial assistance of William Glanton Irvin. They both saw the commercial potential of an unproven engine technology invented two decades earlier by Rudolph Diesel.
Commins diesel engined bus in 1932
Clessie Cummins, a self-taught mechanic and inventor, saw his vision shared by W.G. Irwin, a successful local banker and investor in Columbus, Ohio, who already had provided financial backing for Cummins' auto mechanic operation and machine shop. After a decade of fits and starts, during which time the diesel engine failed to take hold as a commercial success, a stroke of marketing hubris by Clessie Cummins helped save the Company. Cummins mounted a diesel engine in a used Packard limousine and on Christmas day in 1929 took W.G. Irwin for a ride in America's first diesel-powered automobile. Irwin's enthusiasm for the new engine led to an infusion of cash into the Company, which helped fuel a number of speed and endurance records in the coming years - including a grueling 13,535-mile run at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1931.
Euro 4 compliant Commins ISBe 6-cylinder diesel engine
In 1933, the company released the Model H, a powerful engine for transportation that launched the company's most successful engine family. J. Irwin Miller, great-nephew of W.G. Irwin, became general manager in 1934 and went on the lead the company to international prominence over the next four decades. By marketing high-quality products through a unique nationwide service organization, the Company earned its first profit in 1937. Three years later, Cummins offered the industry's first 100,000-mile warranty. The Company also began looking beyond its traditional borders. Cummins opened its first foreign manufacturing facility in Shotts, Scotland, in 1956 and by the end of the 1960s, Cummins had expanded its sales and service network to 2,500 dealers in 98 countries.
Today, Cummins has more than 5,000 facilities in 197 countries and territories. Cummins also forged strong ties to emerging countries such as China, India and Brazil, where Cummins had a major presence before most other U.S. multinational companies. Cummins has grown into one of the largest engine makers in both China and India, and for the past three years approximately half of the Company’s sales have been generated outside the United States.
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