Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler (; 17 March 1834 – 6 March 1900)"Gottlieb Daimler". Encyclopædia Britannica. was a German engineer, industrial designer and industrialist. He was a pioneer of internal-combustion engines and automobile development. He invented the high-speed liquid petroleum-fueled engine.
Daimler and his lifelong business partner Wilhelm Maybach were two inventors whose goal was to create small, high-speed engines to be mounted in any kind of locomotion device. In 1883 they designed a horizontal cylinder layout compressed charge liquid petroleum engine that fulfilled Daimler's desire for a high speed engine which could be throttled, making it useful in transportation applications. This engine was called Daimler's Dream.
In 1885 they designed a vertical cylinder version of this engine which they subsequently fitted to a two-wheeler, the first internal combustion motorcycle which was named the Petroleum Reitwagen (Riding Car) and, in the next year, to a coach, and a boat. Daimler called this engine the grandfather clock engine (Standuhr) because of its resemblance to a large pendulum clock.
In 1890, they converted their partnership into a stock company Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG, in English – the Daimler Motors Corporation). They sold their first automobile in 1892. Daimler fell ill and took a break from the business. Upon his return he experienced difficulty with the other stockholders that led to his resignation in 1893. This was reversed in 1894. Maybach resigned at the same time, and also returned. Daimler died in 1900 and Wilhelm Maybach quit DMG in 1907.
Daimler is seen as "the father of the motorcycle".
Early life and education (1834–1862)
Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler was born on 17 March 1834 in the town of Schorndorf near Stuttgart, Kingdom of Württemberg, a federal state of the German Confederation, in what is now Germany. His parents were Johannes Däumler (Daimler), a baker, and his wife Frederika. By the age of 13 (1847), he had completed six years of primary studies in Lateinschule and became interested in engineering.
After completing secondary school in 1848, Daimler had trained as a gunsmith under Master Gunsmith Hermann Raithel. In 1852 he ended the training with the trade examination. He graduated in 1852, passing the craft test with a pair of engraved double-barreled pistols. The same year, at eighteen, Daimler decided to take up mechanical engineering, abandoning gunsmithing, and left his home town.
Daimler enrolled at Stuttgart's School for Advanced Training in the Industrial Arts, under the tutelage of Ferdinand von Steinbeis. Daimler was studious, even taking extra Sunday morning classes. In 1853, Daimler, with Steinbeis' assistance, got work at "the factory college", Rollé und Schwilque (R&S) in Grafenstaden, so-called because its manager, Friedrich Messmer, had been an instructor at the University of Karlsruhe. Daimler performed well, and when Rollé und Schwilque began making railway locomotives in 1856, Daimler, then 22, was named foreman.
Instead of staying, Daimler took two years at Stuttgart's Polytechnic Institute to hone his skills, gaining in-depth understanding of steam locomotives, as well as "a profound conviction" steam was destined to be superseded. He conceived small, cheap, simple engines for light industrial use, possibly inspired by the newly developed gas engines of that era.
In 1861, he resigned from R&S, visiting Paris, then went on to England, working with the country's top engineering firms, becoming knowledgeable with machine tools. He spent from autumn 1861 to summer 1863 in England, then regarded as "the motherland of technology",Press Kit: Mercedes-Benz in the UK. Stuttgart, 13 June 2007; Daimler Global Media at Beyer, Peacock & Company, Manchester, whose partner Beyer was from Saxony.Ehland, Christoph ed. (2007) Thinking Northern: Textures of Identity in the North of England. Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam While in London, he visited the 1862 International Exhibition, where one of the exhibits was a steam carriage. These carriages did not evidently inspire him, however, for his wish was to improve machine tools for metal and woodworking machinery.
Career through 1882 Daimler went to work for Maschinenfabrik Daniel Straub,See WMF Group Geislingen an der Steige, where he designed tools, mills, and turbines. In 1863, he joined the Bruderhaus Reutlingen, a Christian Socialist toolmaker, as inspector and later executive. While there, he met Wilhelm Maybach, then a 15-year-old orphan. Thanks to Daimler's organisational skills, the factory managed to show a profit, but he quit in frustration in 1869, joining Maschinenbau Gesellschaft Karlsruhe in July.
When in 1872 N.A. Otto and Cie reorganized as Gasmotoren-Fabrik Deutz, management picked Daimler as factory manager, bypassing even Otto, and Daimler joined the company in August, bringing in Maybach as chief designer. While Daimler managed to improve production, the weakness in Otto's vertical piston design, coupled to Daimler's stubborn insistence on atmospheric engines, led the company to an impasse. Neither Otto nor Daimler would give way, and when Daimler was offered the choice of founding a Deutz branch in Saint Petersburg or resigning, he resigned to set up shop in Cannstatt (financed by savings and shares in Deutz), where he was shortly joined by Maybach.
Otto four-stroke engine (1876) In 1872 at age 38, Daimler and Maybach moved to work at the world's largest manufacturer of stationary engines at the time, the Deutz-AG-Gasmotorenfabrik in Cologne. It was half-owned by Nicolaus Otto, who was looking for a new technical director. As directors, both Daimler and Otto focused on gas-engine development while Maybach was chief designer.
In 1876, Otto developed a gaseous fuel, compressed charge four-stroke cycle, (also known as the Otto Cycle) engine after 14 years of effort, a system characterised by four piston strokes (intake, compression, power, and exhaust). Otto intended that his invention would replace the steam engines predominant in those years, even though his engine was still primitive and inefficient.
Otto's engine was patented in 1877, but one of his 25 patents was soon challenged and overturned. Daimler, who wanted to make his own engine, feared Otto's patent would prevent it. Daimler hired an attorney who found that a prior art patent for a four stroke engine had been issued in Paris in 1862 to Beau De Rochas, a French public works engineer.
Meanwhile, serious personal differences arose between Daimler and Otto, reportedly with Otto being jealous of Daimler, because of his university background and knowledge. Daimler wanted to build small engines that could be applied to transportation but Otto had no interest in this. When Otto excluded Daimler from his engine patents there was great animosity between the two. Daimler was fired in 1880, receiving 112,000 Gold marks in Deutz-AG shares in compensation for the patents of both Daimler and Maybach. Maybach resigned later and followed Daimler.
Independent inventor of small, high speed engines (1882)
At Cannstatt, Daimler and the more creative thinking Maybach devised their engine. At Daimler's insistence, it eliminated "the clumsy, complicated slide-valve ignition", in favor of a hot tube system invented by an Englishman named Watson, since electrical systems functioned too slowly.
In the summer of 1882, Daimler moved to Cannstatt (just outside of Stuttgart at that time), purchasing a cottage in Cannstatt's Taubenheimstrasse, with 75,000 Gold marks from the compensation from Deutz-AG. Maybach followed in September of that year. In the garden, they added a brick extension to the roomy glass-fronted summer house and this became their workshop. Their activities alarmed the neighbors who reported them to the police as suspected counterfeiters. The police obtained a key from the gardener and raided the house in their absence, but found only engines.
Daimler and Maybach spent long hours debating how best to fuel Otto's four-stroke design, and turned to a commonly available petroleum fraction. The main distillates of petroleum at the time were lubricating oil, kerosene (burned as lamp fuel), and ligroin (petroleum naphtha or heavy naphtha), which up to then was used mainly as a cleaner and was sold in pharmacies. " [i.e. ligroin and similar petroleum fractions] of a kind common and readily available at pharmacies (chemist's) at the time", as described by antique car expert Michael Plag. "This is a combustible fuel called n-hexane."
Dream engine (1883) In late 1883, Daimler and Maybach patented the first of their engines fueled by ligroin. This engine was patented on 16 December 1883. It achieved Daimler's goal of being small and running fast enough to be useful at 750 rpm. Improved designs in the next four years brought that up to 900 rpm. Daimler had three engines built to this design early in 1884, and a flywheel was included in one of the engines. This design was smaller and lighter than engines by other inventors of the time. Daimler relied on hot tube ignition, until 1897, when he adopted the electrical ignition designed by Bosch.
Grandfather clock engine (1885)
The engine with the flywheel included was built into a light vehicle, called the Reitwagen, the first vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine.
It took considerable effort and experimentation, but eventually, the duo perfected a vertical single, which was fitted in the Reitwagen, a purpose-built two-wheeler chassis with two spring-loaded stabilizers.
Features of the 1885 Engine included: a single horizontal cylinder of Georgano, G. N. (1990) Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886–1930. London: Grange-Universal, p. 13. () air cooling large cast iron flywheel surface carburettor hot tube ignition system (patent 28022) cam operated exhaust valves, allowing high speed operation
600 rpm running speed, beating previous engines, which typically ran at about 120 to 180 rpm weight of around height of
In 1885, they created a carburettor which mixed petrol with air allowing its use as fuel. In the same year Daimler and Maybach assembled a larger version of their engine, still relatively compact, but now with a vertical cylinder of 100 cc displacement and an output of 1 hp at 600 rpm (patent DRP-28-022: "non-cooled, heat insulated engine with unregulated hot-tube ignition"). It was baptised the Standuhr ("grandfather clock"), because Daimler thought it resembled an old pendulum clock.
In November 1885, Daimler installed a smaller version of this engine in a wooden two wheeler frame with two outrigger wheels, creating the first internal combustion motorcycle (Patent 36-423impff & Sohn "Vehicle with gas or petroleum drive machine"). It was named the Reitwagen (riding car). Maybach rode it for three kilometres (two miles) alongside the river Neckar, from Cannstatt to Untertürkheim, reaching .
First automobile (1886) Independently of each other, Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler each produced an automobile in 1886, both in Germany, about 60 miles apart.
About sixty miles away in Mannheim, Karl Benz built an automobile using an integral design for a motorized vehicle with one of his own engines. He was granted a patent for his motorwagen on 29 January 1886.
When this proved the engine capable of driving a vehicle, Daimler devised a single and ordered a Wimpff und Söhne four-seater phaeton to house it. Daimler's engine was installed by Maschinenfabrik Esslingen and drove the rear wheels through a dual-ratio belt drive.