A spark plug (also, very rarely nowadays, in British English: a sparking plug) is an electrical device that fits into

the cylinder head of some internal combustion engines and ignites compressed aerosol gasoline by means of an electric spark. Spark plugs have an insulated center electrode which is connected by a heavily insulated wire to an ignition coil or magneto circuit on the outside, forming, with a grounded terminal on the base of the plug, a spark gap inside the cylinder. Early patents for spark plugs included those by Nikola Tesla (in U.S. Patent 609,250 for an ignition timing system, 1898), Richard Simms (GB 24859/1898, 1898) and Robert Bosch (GB 26907/1898). Some historians have reported that Edmond Berger invented an early spark plug on February 2, 1839[1]. Karl Benz is also credited with the invention. But only the invention of the first commercially viable high-voltage spark plug as part of a magnetobased ignition system by Robert Bosch's engineer Gottlob Honold in 1902 made possible the development of the internal combustion engine. Internal combustion engines can be divided into spark-ignition engines, which require spark plugs to begin combustion, and compression-ignition engines (diesel engines), which compress the air and then inject diesel fuel into the heated compressed air mixture where it autoignites. Compression-ignition engines may use glow plugs to improve cold start characteristics. Spark plugs may also be used in other applications such as furnaces where a combustible mixture should be ignited. In this case, they are sometimes referred to as flame igniters.