Gottlieb Daimler

Gottlieb Daimler was born in Schorndorf Germany in 1834. Although he had trained to be a gunsmith, Gottlieb Daimler decided to become an engineer instead.

Early in his career Gottlieb believed that steam engines were outdated and began working on an experimental gas engine

Gottlieb Daimler

Because Gottlieb was a difficult individual to get along with, he ended up leaving many engineering firms because they didn’t share his vision or work ethic.

He worked in Belgium, Britain and France and in 1872 Gottlieb became technical director to the gas-engine company ‘Deutz Gasmotorenfabrik’ which Nicolaus Otto co-owned.

Daimler and Maybach

One of Gottlieb Daimlers closest friends and good partners was Wilhelm Maybach whom he met in 1865 in Reutlingen where Daimler was the technical manager of the works at the orphanage in Bruderhaus where Wilhelm lived.

Gottlieb and Wilhelm became very good friends and worked on Daimler’s Reitwagen (1885) and Motorwagen (1886), which along with similar efforts by Carl Benz are considered the world’s first self-propelled vehicles.

While working at Deutz Gasmotorenfabrik Gottlieb Daimler put together a team of the best engineers he had worked with, with Wilhelm Maybach leading the way.

Although Daimler was very successful at Deutz Gasmotorenfabrik, he was not satisfied. Gottlieb wanted more time for research and development while Nikolaus Otto, the co-owned of the company, wanted to make more engines,

So Daimler left and his good friend Maybach went with him.

Gottlieb Daimler – Taking the Engine a Step Further

Gottlieb Daimler and Maybach concentrated on producing the first light-weight, high-speed engine to run on gasoline.

Eventually Gottlieb and Maybach produced an engine with a surface carburetor, that vaporized the petrol and mixed it with air. The engine they’d produced with Nicolaus Otto achieved 130 revolutions per minute, however Daimler and Maybach’s engine reached 900 revolutions per minute.

In 1885, Gottlieb Daimler and his design partner Wilhelm Maybach took Nicolaus Otto internal combustion engine a step further and patented what is generally recognized as the prototype of the modern gas engine.

Although Gottlieb Daimler did not invent the internal combustion engine, he did improve on it.

Gottlieb Daimler – Worlds First Motorcycle

In Cannstatt Gottlieb Daimler and Wihelm Maybach patented their four stroke engine in 1885. They also created the world’s first motorcycle by mating a Gottlieb Daimler engine to a bicycle.

It was In 1889 that Daimler and Maybach placed their engine into a horse carriage and drove the vehicle at speeds of 11 miles per hour, given them the first produced four-wheeled automobile.

They decided to sell their vehicles after they devised a four-speed gearbox and a belt-driven mechanism to turn the wheels.

Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft

The Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft was founded in 1890. The company soon developed a reputation for reliability.

In the first road race held between Paris and Rouen in 1894, only 15 of the 102 cars completed the course and all 15 cars were powered by Daimler engines.

Impressed by this Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, decided to use Gottlieb Daimler engines in the airships he was building.

Daimler’s engines were also used in the armored cars that were being developed.

After being told to stay in bed because of failing health in 1899, the workaholic Gottlieb Daimler insisted on being driven in bad weather to inspect a possible factory site. On the way home Gottlieb Daimler fell out and died on March 6, 1900.

Wilhelm Maybach

Born February 9 1846 in Heilbron, Wilhelm Maybach who became known as the Roi des Constructeurs – King of Designers grew up one of six children who’s family later moved to Stuttgart.

His mother died in 1854 and his father died two years later making young Wilhelm by the age of ten an orphan.

In response to an advertisement in the Stuttgarter Anzeiger newspaper, a charitable organization offered to look after young Wilhelm Maybach.

He grew up in an orphanage known as Bruderhaus in Reutlingen and was trained as a technical draughtsman in the adjoining engineering works.

Talented Young Wilhelm Maybach Discovered

Gustav Werner, the founder and director of the school, spotted and nurtured young Maybach’s technical talents.

During 1861 to 1865 Wilhelm Maybach trained as a draughtsman or draftsman and he also enrolled in evening classes for physics and mathematics.

It was in 1865 when Wilhelm Maybach was 19 years old that he met Gottlieb Daimler the technical manager of the works. Daimler recognized Wilhelm’s talents and taking him under his wing, Wilhelm Maybach became Daimler’s protégé.

The two developed a close working relationship and friendship that lasted until Daimler’s death in 1900.

Wilhelm Maybach would follow Daimler to Karlaruhe in 1869 and in 1872 to the Gasmotorenfabrik AG in Co-logne, a company founded by Nicolaus Otto. There they worked on the four-stroke engine invented by Nicolaus Otto.

It was in 1878 that Wilhelm Maybach married Bertha Habermaas and on July 6, 1879 their son Karl Maybach was born.

In the middle of 1882 Daimler left Gasmotorenfabrik Deutz after a disagreement with Nicolaus Otto. and Wilhelm Maybach followed him to Cannstatt near Stuttgart where they converted a greenhouse into a workshop. Daimler established his own company which later became Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft.

In October of that same year, Wilhelm Maybach was able to develop the light-weight, high-speed internal combustion engines suitable for water, land-based and airborne vehicles.

Wilhelm Maybach – Developed the Engine

They developed their engine after just one year of work. It was later in that same year that they really made strides with the ‘grandfather clock’ engine which was shaped like a grandfather clock.

It was a lightweight compact engine with a vertically fixed cylinder which was suited for installation in vehicles.

In 1885 this 0.5 horsepower engine was put on a wooden ‘riding car’ making the worlds first ‘motor cycle’.

Even though a year later, it was installed into a carriage, Wilhelm Maybach quickly realized he couldn’t be content with just producing engines for carriages.

The steel-wheeled car was the first of such products. It was with this vehicle that Wilhelm Maybach introduced the sliding pinion gearshift system into automotive engineering.

Wilhelm Maybach – Paris 1889 World Exhibition

Presented at the Paris World Exhibition of 1889, the steel-wheeled car also precipitated the birth of the French automotive industry.

In November 1890 when Daimlerfounded ‘Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft’ with Duttenhofer and Lorenz, Wilhelm Maybach was appointed chief engineer. However, because of unacceptable terms of his contract he decided to leave the company in February 1891.

For the next year and a half Wilhelm Maybach worked out of his apartment and Gottlieb Daimler continued to provide financial support.

In the fall of 1892 development work, also supported financially by Daimler, began in the Hotel Hermann which yielded such important designs as the spray-nozzle carburetor and the Phoenix engine as well as improvements to elements of the belt drive system.

Pressure put on Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft by English industrialist Frederick Simms eventually led to Wilhelm Maybach being reinstalled as the company’s chief engineer in November 1895.

Once back Wilhelm Maybach first developed the tubular radiator with fan, then the honeycomb radiator; and this effective form of engine cooling opened the way to the development of the modern automobile

Wilhelm Maybach – One Achievement After Another

The ‘Roi des Constructeurs’ – King of Designers, as the French called him, went from one technical achievement to another, creating the first four-cylinder automobile engine, and in 1898-99 a whole generation of engines consisting of five models producing between 6 and 23 hp.

During the years Wilhelm Maybach worked at Daimler-Motoren-Gesellshart he achieved many firsts.

The work he developed resulted in many inventions which are looked on as landmarks in the development history of automotive engineering. His focus on components led him to achieve firsts with:

• the gearwheel transmission in 1889
• the float-chamber spray-jet carburetor in 1893
• the honeycomb radiator core in 1896

Wilhelm Maybachs’ strongest point was the ability to combine individual solutions to create the complete concepts that turned engine-driven carriages into motorcars.

It was Emil Jellinek, who ran a large establishment in Nice, a city in southern France, who had good relations with international financiers and aristocrats, who promoted and sold Daimler’s cars especially to the very rich.

In 1899, Daimler-Motoren-Gesellshart’already supplied ten cars to Jellinek and as many as 29 in 1900.

Emil Jellinek’s daughter Mercedes

Jellinek continued to demand faster and more powerful cars from Daimler-Motoren-Gesellshart which he entered in race meetings – where he raced under a pseudonym, using his daughter’s name Mercedes, he soon became known as ‘Monsieur Mercédès’ in the motoring circles.

In April 1900, the decision was made to use Mercedes as a product name. In addition, it was agreed that a new engine bearing the name Daimler-Mercedes was to be developed.

Wilhelm Maybach develops a race car using lightweight metals. It was fitted with a 35-hp four-cylinder engine featuring two carburetors. With honeycomb radiator, gear-only transmission and a very low center of gravity, this vehicle represents the car of the future. First Mercedes developed by Wilhelm Maybach, the chief engineer at Daimler-Motoren-Gesellshart caused quite a stir in the first year of the new century

This car was delivered to Jellinek by Daimler-Motoren-Gesellshart on December 22, 1900.

This first Mercedes, developed by Wilhelm Maybach, the chief engineer at Daimler-Motoren-Gesellshart caused quite a stir in the first year of the new century. With its low center of gravity, pressed-steel frame, light, high-performance engine and honeycomb radiator, it featured numerous innovations and is regarded today as the first modern automobile.

Jellinek ordered 36 of these cars at a total price of 550,000 marks – a sizable order even at today’s equivalent value of DM 5.5 million. A few weeks later, he placed an order for another 36 cars, all with 8 hp engines.

The Nice week in March 1901, were the Mercedes cars were found to be unbeatable in virtually every discipline, attracted tons of publicity for Jellinek and the Mercedes.

In March and August 1901, the 12/16 hp and 8/11 hp sister models appeared. Jellinek’s orders soon stretched the Daimler plant in Cannstatt to full production capacity.

Mercedes was lodged as the trade name on June 23,1902 and legally registered on September 26.

Wilhelm Maybachs jem was his 1900 35 Horsepowed Mercedes where he combined two decades of his automotive engineering experience.

The car was rear-wheel and had a front-mounted four-cylinder engine — partly made of light alloy — and a three-speed transmission.

The Mercedes also featured a revolutionary low-to-the-ground design, setting it apart from the tall, clumsy looking cars of that period, as well as front wheels that were turned by a round steering wheel on an angled steering column.

The Mercedes truly represented a major turning point in the development of the automobile.

The first Mercedes is regarded as the first modern automobile. In 1901-02 a Mercedes car reaches 64.4 km/h to smash the world speed record and it was in 1903-04 that Maybach developed the first six-cylinder Mercedes.

In 1906 Wilhelm Maybach designed an innovative 120-hp race engine with overhead intake and exhaust valves and dual ignition.

Of all his designs, Maybach created one of the most outstanding after Daimler’s death in 1900: the Mercedes, which caused such a sensation at Nice Week in March 1901 because it was a vehicle that stood head and shoulders above anything previously conceived or built at Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft.

And the Credit Goes To…

Both Wilhelm Maybach and Emil Jellinek get credit for the birth of the new car and for constantly challenging Maybach and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft to produce ever more powerful and faster cars.

However despite the great success of the Mercedes cars in the years that followed, Wilhelm Maybach was the victim of scheming behind his back.

He was replaced as chief engineer and his activities were reduced to the level of an Inventors Office causing his acrimonious departure from Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft in 1907, seven years after his close friend Gottlieb Daimler’s death.

When the Zeppelin LZ 4 airship was destroyed in a storm in Echterdingen on August 5, 1908, Maybach offered to build Count Zeppelin a new, improved airship engine.

The resulting negotiations led to the creation on March 23, 1909 of Luftfahrzeug-Motorenbau-GmbH Bissingen”. The technical manager was Wilhelm Maybach’s son Karl who also designed the new engine.

Wilhelm Maybachs Son Karl Maybach

In 1912 the firm, renamed Luftfahrzeug-Motoren-GmbH, moved to Friedrichshafen. Both father and son held a 20% stake in the company however father Wilhelm Maybach placed the future of the business firmly in the hands of his son Karl.

After 1922 luxury cars were also produced in Friedrichshafen. One highlight of the product range was the 1929 Maybach 12 DS, the first automobile with a V12 engine and, along with its successor the Zeppelin, seen as the German answer to Rolls Royce.

Stuttgart’s technical university presents Wilhelm Maybach with an honorary doctorate in 1916 and in 1929 Wilhelm Maybach died on December 29 in Stuttgart.

In 1996 Wilhelm Maybach was accepted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.

Nicolaus August Otto

Nicolaus August Otto was born on June 14, 1832 in Holzhausen, Germany. At the age of sixteen, Nicolaus Otto dropped out of high school and worked in a grocery store for a while and also worked as a clerk in Frankfurt.

Nicolaus Otto’s first occupation was as a traveling salesman selling sugar, kitchenware and tea to grocery stores on the German side of the Belgian and the French border as Nicolaus was trying to make enough money to wed his beloved Ann, whom Nicolaus Otto met at a carnival in Cologne in 1858, when he was 26.

As a young boy Nicolaus Otto had a fascination for things mechanical and soon developed an interest in the new technologies of the day. Nicolaus began experimenting with building four-stroke engines after coming across a newspaper article of the Lenoir two-stroke gas-driven internal combustion engine.

Nicolaus Otto built an internal combustion engine before year’s end and would invent the first practical alternative to the steam engine.

Although Nicolaus Otto’s early attempts at building a combustion engine failed, they so impressed Eugen Langen, a technician and proprietor of a sugar factory, who took on Otto as a partner. Nicolaus quit his job and joined Eugen Lengen and in 1864, the two of them started the world’s first engine manufacturing company ‘N.A. Otto & Cie’

Nicolaus Otto Patten

The company exists today as Klockner-Humbolt-Deutz AG and is the oldest company manufacturing internal combustion engines and the world’s largest manufacturer of air-cooled diesel engines.

In 1867, Nicolaus Otto and Eugen Lengen were awarded a Gold Medal at the Paris World Exhibition for their atmospheric gas engine built a year earlier. Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach later joined the company.

“In his youthful enthusiasm Nicolaus thought of this day and night,” wrote Kurt Rathke in his biography of Nicolaus Otto. “Otto had the wildest plans about the future, all to do with the gas engine and its possibilities.”

According to Rathke, Otto was inspired by watching smoke rise from a chimney. “Nicolaus decided that the place of explosion in a gas engine, which he likened to the chimney, should receive a rich fuel mixture. His idea was to let only fresh air enter first and fall down on unburned gases from the previous working stroke. Only then should the gas mixture be inducted.”

Although Lenoir built the first commercially practical internal combustion engine in 1859, the Lenoir engine failed to come up to initial expectations and fell suddenly from popularity.

This was due, partly to the troublesome electrical ignition system, but mainly to the high consumption of, what was then, expensive gas – and what’s different from today? In practice almost 100 cubic feet of gas were burnt per horsepower per hour.

The amount of cooling water needed was considerable and the heat generated was so great, that unless the bearings were heavily oiled, the engine would seize.

Nicolaus Otto felt that the Lenoir engine would have more uses if it could run on liquid fuel so he devised a carburetor for this engine and worked to improve it in other ways.

Although two years later, Alphonse Beau de Rochas set forth the principle of the four-stroke engine; one of the most important landmarks in engine design comes from Nicolaus Otto, who in 1876 invented an effective gas motor engine.

Nicolaus built the first practical four-stroke internal combustion engine with ignition device, calling it the “Otto Cycle Engine”. In 1861, Otto patented a two-stroke engine that ran on gas and in the next ten years, over 30,000 of the engine were sold. This engine was the prototype of the combustion engines that have since been built.

How the four-stroke Engine worked

On its first stroke the piston would draw in an explosive mixture of fuel and air. The second, return stroke would compress the mixture. Ignition would then explode the charge, the resulting expansion driving the piston for its third stroke. The final stroke would exhaust the burnt gases, clearing the cylinder to start the cycle again.

A very smart Otto patented his construction in 1877. And although he never became directly involved in car manufacturing, his compressed-charge engine marked the beginning of an era of pioneering and was the foundation of the modern engine.

Nicolaus Otto continued to develop his four-stroke engine after 1876 and he considered his work finished after his invention of the first magneto ignition system for low voltage ignition in 1884.

Nicolaus Otto’s patent was overturned however in 1886 in favor of the patent granted to Alphonse Beau de Roaches for his four-stroke engine.

But an undaunted Nicolaus Otto built a working engine while Roaches’ design stayed on paper. So on October 23, 1877, another patent for a gas-motor engine was issued to Nicolaus Otto, and Francis and William Crossley.

Gottlied Daimler’s first motorcycle Gottlieb Daimler constructed a very light engine, using Nicolaus Otto’s ‘model and attached one of them to a bicycle making the world’s first motorcycle. Daimler also constructed an automobile, using Nicolaus Otto’s engine.

Karl Benz three wheel vehicle

Karl Benz also built his fist three-wheel automobile employing Nicolaus Otto’s engine and the firms of Daimler and Benz merged and manufactured the famous Mercedes-Benz vehicles.

NIcolaus Otto’s practical internal combustion engine is used to power automobiles, motorcycles and motorboats. Also, the Diesel engine is a form of internal combustion engine, which employs a four-stroke cycle that is similar to Nicolaus Otto’s.

Nicolaus August Otto died at age 59 on January 26, 1891 in Cologne.