BRETON made a 12-cylinder radial rotary engine with facing cylinders. The 1st and 2nd row cylinders used the same double cylinder head. The base of the cylinders was not projected towards the engine center, but towards the periphery.

“A current Breton engine”

-Three crankshafts were driven by the adjacent cylinders in each row. These were geared to a central shaft as shown in the diagram.

“The Breton at the Paris Air Show”

-The mechanism drove a pinion at the end of each of the three crankshafts at 1,600 rpm, while the engine itself rotated at 400 rpm.

-An interesting feature was that the power could be varied from 20 to 50 CV.

“Breton princile”

-From the MAE we obtained some inner design drawings for the Breton engine so we can observe the interesting architecture.

“Breton engine diagrams”

From appendix 6: An unexpected photograph of the rotary Breton. From the main text we know that they made engines from 10 to 60 hp and 4, 6, 8 or 12 cylinders.

“Six-cylinder Breton”