Who is the inventor of the turbocharger? It is generally accepted that the Swiss engineer 

Bich, who declared the patent in 1905. At that time, it was mainly used in aircraft engines 

and tank engines. It was not until 1961 that General Motors Corp. tentatively installed 

turbochargers in some models of its production.

The 1970s marked a turning point for turbochargers, the Porsche 911 with a turbocharged 

engine was introduced But the Swedish company that brought turbocharging to life was 

SAAB, whose 1977 SAAB99 model made turbocharging more widely available, but at the 

time turbochargers were limited to small cars with petrol engines. It was not until the mid-

1980s that European and American truckmakers incorporated turbocharging technology 

into their diesel engines, and it was only during this decade that turbochargers became 

increasingly popular in domestic cars.

The earliest turbochargers were used in sports cars or Formula racing cars, so the engines 

could gain more power in races where engine displacement was limited. As we all know, 

the engine is powered by the combustion of fuel in the cylinder. Since the amount of fuel 

input is limited by the amount of air sucked into the cylinder, the output power of the engine 

will also be limited. If the engine is already operating at optimum performance, increasing 

output can only increase the amount of fuel by squeezing more air into the cylinders, thereby

 increasing the combustion capacity. Therefore, under the existing technical conditions, 

turbocharger is the only mechanical device that can increase the output power of the engine 

without changing the working efficiency.