Who invented the turbocharger?

Who invented the turbocharger?

Whom do we thank for turbochargers? Alfred J. Büchi (1879–1959), an automotive engineer employed by the Gebrüder Sulzer Engine Company of Winterthur, Switzerland. Much like the turbocharger I've illustrated up above, his original design used an exhaust-driven turbine shaft to power a compressor that forced more air into an engine's cylinders. He originally developed the turbocharger in the years before World War I and patented it in Germany in 1905, but continued to work on improved designs until his death four decades later.

Büchi wasn't the only important figure in the story, however. Some years earlier, Sir Dugald Clark (1854–1932), Scottish inventor of the two-stroke engine, had experimented with separating the compression and expansion stages of internal combustion using two separate cylinders. This worked a bit like supercharging, increasing both the air flow into the cylinder and the amount of fuel that could be burned. Other engineers, including Louis Renault, Gottlieb Daimler, and Lee Chadwick, also experimented successfully with supercharging systems.