More regarding the Industrial revolution

 One of the things that blew my mind when I figured it out is that the cylinders that they created for steam engines that ran steamships

The first one was built by an American by the way:

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The first successful steamboat was the Clermont, which was built by American inventor Robert Fulton in 1807.

A History of Steamboats

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The point is that at one point I realized that if someone hadn't invented the steam engine first then 

the gasoline and diesel engine likely wouldn't have been invented either.

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The gasoline engine was invented way after the steam engine in:

In 1872, American George Brayton invented the first commercial liquid-fueled internal combustion engine. In 1876, Nicolaus Otto began working with Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach, patented the compressed charge, four-cycle engine. In 1879, Karl Benz patented a reliable two-stroke gasoline engine.

Inventor: Nikolaus Otto; Étienne Lenoir

Internal combustion engine - Wikipedia

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So, the point of all this is that I realized that the steam engine cylinders became the gasoline engine and diesel engine cylinders too.

All three spin on one form or another of compression.

For example, Steam compresses the pistons in the cylinders to move which creates enough force to run a Steam Train or a Steamship or anything else run by steam.

Likewise, gasoline explodes in a controlled fashion with perfect timing in all cylinders which creates an ongoing form of power which can then be harnessed to various machines around the world. Gasoline engines need spark plugs that fire off to explode the gasoline in each cylinder in perfect timing with all the other cylinders.

Then you have diesel engines which don't have spark plugs at all but instead might have glow plugs for easier starting. But, diesel explodes through the actual compression of the piston in the cylinder which is interesting too.

the point being without steam engines being invented first you wouldn't have had necessarily a gasoline engine or a diesel engine being invented either.

So, it's all a progression of engine inventions through time!