History of the Supercharger

In 1860, brothers Philander and Francis Marion Roots of Connersville, Indiana, patented the design for an air mover, for use in blast furnaces and other industrial applications. By the late 1800s, it had made its way to Germany, where an engineer called Krigar invented an air pump that utilized twin rotating shafts that compressed air.

The combination of the pair of inventions resulted in a third, with the first functional supercharger attributed to German engineer Gottlieb Daimler, who received a German patent for supercharging an internal combustion engine in 1885. Louis Renault patented a centrifugal supercharger in France in 1902. An early supercharged race car was built by Lee Chadwick of Pottstown, Pennsylvania in 1908, which, it was reported, reached a speed of 100 miles per hour (160 km/h).