In 1904, at the end of his first year at Cambridge, he decided to enter the University Automobile Club's event, which was a competition to design a machine that could travel the furthest on 1 imp qt (1.14 l) of petrol. His engine had a single cylinder, and was the heaviest entered, but his motorcycle design won the competition, having covered a distance of 40 miles (64 km). He was then persuaded to join the Professor of Mechanism and Applied Mechanics, Bertram Hopkinson, working on research into engine performance.