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I recall watching films of WW I aircraft landing and hearing the engines sounding like they were cutting out. The reason, it turns out, is that it was so difficult to mixing air and fuel properly at different volumes that the throttle didn't have a "low" setting. To slow the engine down they had a switch that shut the ignition off on half the cylinders and another one to shut the ignition completely off - just to control engine speed.
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The ignition cut off was used on the rotary engine because you could not attach a carbs or manfolds to the rotating case. Gnomes and LeRhone had no thottle at all, just "blip" the ingition. The other conventional engines of ww1 had pretty developed carb systems, in fact the BMWiiia had altitude compenstating mixture control