Actually, one of the advantages of these engines were that they were balanced and did not need a counterbalance like many of the early fixed blocked engines. They also did not need a flywheel. Well, let's face it. the engine block is the flywheel. And since the block spins, it was an easy way to keep the engine cool. These early engines did not have a lot of power, so this was one way to get a higher power to weight. One interesting thing is that the intake valve was mounted in the piston. 30 years earlier there was a motor cycle that used a 5 cylinder engine of the same principle.Many years ago I heard about these rotary engines. I thought it was a joke.
Who the heck would build an engine where the crankshaft is stationary and the propeller is bolted to the engine block?
I would imagine balancing this configuration was a nightmare.
It's problematic from many different angles.
But, wheels were square once
Those are radial engines, not rotary engines...I always love watching those engines. I guess one could say they were amung the first multi cylinder engines that had no distributor. The coil was stationary, and the spark jumps the gap as the cylinder goes past it.
Another forgotten cool item from that time, is the inertia starter. Some were hand crank, some were electric, and some were either.