A device in an engine that mixes air with vaporized fuel (gasoline) in the correct ratio for combustion; also spelled carburetor.
From carburet (to combine with carbon) plus -er (device suffix). The root comes from Latin carbo (coal/carbon). Developed in the 1890s as internal combustion engines needed fuel mixing.
Carburetors were so important to the early auto industry that improving them was how companies competed—better carburetors meant faster acceleration and better fuel economy, and by the 1980s, fuel injection replaced them because computers could do the mixing job perfectly.
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