Daimler, Gottlieb

SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Land transport

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The son of a baker, his youthful interest in technical affairs led to his being apprenticed to a gunsmith with whom he produced his apprenticeship piece: a double-barrelled pistol with a rifled barrel and "nicely chased scrollwork", for which he received high praise. He remained there until 1852 before going to technical school in Stuttgart from 1853 to 1857. He then went to a steam-engineering company in Strasbourg to gain practical experience. He completed his formal education at Stuttgart Polytechnik, and in 1861 he left to tour France and England. There he worked in the engine-shop of Smith, Peacock \& Tanner and then with Roberts \& Co., textile machinery manufacturers of Manchester. He later moved to Coventry to work at Whitworths, and it was in that city that he was later involved with the Daimler Motor Company, who had been granted a licence by his company in Germany. In 1867 he was working at Bruderhaus Engineering Works at Reutlingen and in 1869 went to Maschinenbau Gesellschaft Karlsruhe where he became Manager and later a director. Early in the 1870s, N.A. Otto had reorganized his company into Gasmotorenfabrik Deutz and he appointed Gottlieb Daimler as Factory Manager and Wilhelm Maybach as Chief Designer. Together they developed the Otto engine to its limit, with Otto's co-operation. Daimler and Maybach had met previously when both were working at Bruderhaus. In 1875 Daimler left Deutz, taking Maybach with him to set up a factory in Stuttgart to manufacture light, high-speed internal-combustion engines. Their first patent was granted in 1883. This was for an engine fuelled by petrol and with hot tube ignition which continued to be used until Robert Bosch's low-voltage ignition became available in 1897. Two years later he produced his first vehicle, a motor cycle with outriggers. They showed a motor car at the Paris exhibition in 1889, but French manufacturers were slow to come forward and no French company could be found to undertake manufacture. Eventually Panhard and Levassor established the Daimler engine in France. Daimler Motoren GmbH was started in 1895, but soon after Daimler and Maybach parted, having provided an engine for a boat on the River Neckar in 1887 and that for the Wolfert airship in 1888. Daimler was in sole charge of the company from 1895, but his health began to decline in 1899 and he died in 1900.

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Daimler, Gottlieb Daimler.

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Ackermann, Rudolph

Austin, Herbert

Benz, Karl

Bollée, Ernest-Sylvain

Bosch, Robert August

Bouton, Georges Thadé

Bowser, Sylvanus F.

Butler, Edward

Clerk, Sir Dugald

Daimler, Gottlieb

Duryea, Charles Edgar

Edison, Thomas Alva

Ford, Henry

Gurney, Sir Goldsworthy

Haynes, Elwood

Issigonis, Sir Alexander Arnold Constantine

Johansson, Carl Edvard

Kettering, Charles Franklin

Knight, Margaret E.

Lanchester, Frederick William

Langen, Eugen

Marcus, Siegfried

Maybach, Wilhelm

Morris, William Richard

Moulton, Alexander

Olds, Ransom Eli

Otto, Nikolaus August

Porsche, Ferdinand

Railton, Reid Anthony

Rolls, The Hon. Charles Stewart

Royce, Sir Frederick Henry

Salomans, Sir David Lionel

Shaw, Percy

Simms, Frederick

Wankel, Felix

Wolseley, Frederick York

See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA

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Abt, Roman

Ackermann, Rudolph

Adams, William Bridges

Albone, Daniel

Allen, Horatio

Aspinall, Sir John Audley Frederick

Austin, Herbert

Baldwin, Matthias William

Behr, Fritz Bernhard

Benz, Karl

Beyer, Charles Frederick

Blenkinsop, John

Booth, Henry

Borsig, Johann Carl Friedrich August

Bousquet, Gaston du

Bramah, Joseph

Brennan, Louis

Brunel, Isambard Kingdom

Bulleid, Oliver Vaughan Snell

Burroughs, Michael

Bury, Edward

Butler, Edward

Caprotti, Arturo

Cardew, Philip

Chapelon, André

Churchward, George Jackson

Cooper, Peter

Crampton, Thomas Russell

Crompton, Rookes Evelyn Bell

Cugnot, Nicolas Joseph

Curr, John

Daft, Leo

Daimler, Gottlieb

Davidson, Robert

Dunlop, John Boyd

Duryea, Charles Edgar

Engerth, Wilhelm

England, George

Fairlie, Robert Francis

Ford, Henry

Forrester, George

Garratt, Herbert William

Gooch, Sir Daniel

Goodyear, Charles

Gregory, Sir Charles Hutton

Gresley, Sir Herbert Nigel

Gurney, Sir Goldsworthy

Hackworth, Timothy

Hamilton, Harold Lee

Hancock, Walter

Hansom, Joseph Aloysius

Haynes, Elwood

Hedley, William

Inoue Masaru

Issigonis, Sir Alexander Arnold Constantine

Ivatt, Henry Alfred

Jervis, John Bloomfield

Johnson, Samuel Waite

Joy, David

Kirtley, Matthew

Knight, John Peake

Krauss, Georg

Laithwaite, Eric Roberts

Lanchester, Frederick William

Lartigue, Charles François Marie-Thérèse

Locke, Joseph

McAdam, John Loudon

Macmillan, Kirkpatrick

MacNeill, Sir John Benjamin

Ma Jun

Mallet, Jules Théodore Anatole

Marcus, Siegfried

Marsh, Sylvester

Metcalf, John

Michaux, Pierre

Morris, William Richard

Moulton, Alexander

Murray, Matthew

Olds, Ransom Eli

Palmer, Henry Robinson

Palmer, John

Pihl, Carl Abraham

Porsche, Ferdinand

Pullman, George Mortimer

Ramsbottom, John

Rastrick, John Urpeth

Riggenbach, Niklaus

Rolls, The Hon. Charles Stewart

Royce, Sir Frederick Henry

Salomans, Sir David Lionel

Sauerbrun, Charles de

Saxby, John

Shaw, Percy

Shillibeer, George

Siemens, Dr Ernst Werner von

Sinclair, Sir Clive Maries

Sperry, Elmer Ambrose

Spooner, Charles Easton

Sprague, Frank Julian

Stanier, Sir William Arthur

Stephenson, George

Stephenson, John

Stephenson, Robert

Stevens, John

Stevenson, Robert

Thompson, Benjamin

Train, George Francis

Trésaguet, Pierre Marie Jerome

Trevithick, Richard

Tyer, Edward

Vauclain, Samuel Matthews

Vignoles, Charles Blacker

Volk, Magnus

Wankel, Felix

Webb, Francis William

Westinghouse, George

Winans, Ross

Wolseley, Frederick York

Woods, Granville

Worsdell, Nathaniel

Worsdell, Thomas William

Gottlieb Daimler

SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Orphaned at the age of 10, Maybach was destined to become one of the world's most renowned engine designers. From 1868 he was apprenticed as a draughtsman at the Briiderhaus Engineering Works in Reurlingen, where his talents were recognized by Gottlieb Daimler, who was Manager and Technical Director. Nikolaus Otto had by then developed his atmospheric engine and reorganized his company, Otto \& Langen, into Gasmotorenfabrik Deutz, of which he appointed Daimler Manager. After employment at a machine builders in Karlsruhe, in 1872 Maybach followed Daimler to Deutz where he worked as a partner on the design of high-speed engines: his engines ran at up to 900 rpm, some three times as fast as conventional engines of the time. Maybach made improvements to the timing, carburation and other features. In 1881 Daimler left the Deutz Company and set up on his own as a freelance inventor, moving with his family to Bad Cannstatt; in April 1882 Maybach joined him as Engineer and Designer to set up a partnership to develop lightweight high-speed engines suitable for vehicles. A motor cycle appeared in 1885 and a modified horse-drawn carriage was fitted with a Maybach engine in 1886. Other applications to small boats, fire-engine pumps and small locomotives quickly followed, and the Vee engine of 1890 that was fitted into the French Peugeot automobiles had a profound effect upon the new sport of motor racing. In 1895 Daimler won the first international motor race and the same year Maybach became Technical Director of the Daimler firm. In 1899 Emil Jellinek, Daimler agent in France and also Austro-Hungarian consul, required a car to compete with Panhard and Levassor, who had been victorious in the Paris-Bordeaux race; he wanted more power and a lower centre of gravity, and turned to Maybach with his requirements, the 35 hp Daimler- Simplex of 1901 being the outcome. Its performance and road holding superseded those of all others at the time; it was so successful that Jellinek immediately placed an order for thirty-six cars. His daughter's name was Mercedes, after whom, when the merger of Daimler and Benz came about, the name Mercedes-Benz was adopted.

In his later years, Maybach designed the engine for the Zeppelin airships. He retired from the Daimler Company in 1907.

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KAB / IMcN

SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Simms was born of English parents in Hamburg. He met Gottlieb Daimler at an exhibition in Bremen in 1890, where he had gone to exhibit an aerial cableway that he had designed to provide passenger transport over rivers and valleys; in the previous year, he had invented and patented an automatic railway ticket machine, the principle of which is still in use worldwide. He obtained a licence to develop the Daimler engine throughout the British Empire (excluding Canada). He had great trouble in arranging any demonstration of the Daimler engine as authorities were afraid of the risk of fire and explosion with petroleum spirit, particularly at indoor venues. He succeeded eventually in operating a boat with an internal combustion engine between Charing Cross and Westminster piers on the River Thames in 1891. He then rented space under a railway arch at Putney Bridge station for installing Daimler engines in boats. With Sir David Salomans he was responsible for organizing the first motor show in Britain in 1895; four cars were on show. Simms became a director of the main Daimler company, and was a consultant to the Coventry Daimler Company. He was the founder of the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland, a forerunner of the Royal Automobile Club (RAC), as well as the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.

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SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Robert was the eighth of twelve children of the landlord of a hotel in the village of Albeck. He wanted to be a botanist and zoologist, but at the age of 18 he was apprenticed as a precision mechanic. He travelled widely in the south of Germany, which is unusual for an apprenticeship. In 1884, he went to the USA, where he found employment with Thomas A. Edison and his colleague, the German electrical engineer Siegmund Bergmann. During this period he became interested and involved in the rights of workers.

In 1886 he set up his own workshop in Stuttgart, having spent a short time with Siemens in England. He built up a sound reputation for quality, but the firm outgrew its capital and in 1892 he had to sack nearly all his employees. Fortunately, among the few that he was able to retain were Arnold Zähringer, who later became Manager, and an apprentice, Gottlieb Harold. These two, under Bosch, were responsible for the development of the low-tension (1897) and the high-tension (1902) magneto. They also developed the Bosch sparking plug, again in 1902. The distributor for multi-cylinder engines followed in 1910. These developments, with a strong automotive bias, were stimulated by Bosch's association with Frederick Simms, an Englishman domiciled in Hamburg, who had become a director of Daimler in Canstatt and had secured the UK patent rights of the Daimler engine. Simms went on to invent, in about 1898, a means of varying ignition timing with low-tension magnetos.

It must be emphasized, as pointed out above, that the invention of neither type of magneto was due to Bosch. Nikolaus Otto introduced a crude low-tension magneto in 1884, but it was not patented in Germany, while the high-tension magneto was invented by Paul Winand, a nephew of Otto's partner Eugen Langen, in 1887, this patent being allowed to lapse in 1890.

Bosch's social views were advanced for his time. He introduced an eight-hour day in 1906 and advocated industrial arbitration and free trade, and in 1932 he wrote a book on the prevention of world economic crises, Die Verhütung künftiger Krisen in der Weltwirtschaft. Other industrialists called him the "Red Bosch" because of his short hours and high wages; he is reputed to have replied, "I do not pay good wages because I have a lot of money, I have a lot of money because I pay good wages." The firm exists to this day as the giant multi-national company Robert Bosch GmbH, with headquarters still in Stuttgart.

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SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines

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A sound engineering training combined with an inherited business sense were credentials that Langen put to good use in his association with internal-combustion engines. The sight of a working engine built by N.A. Otto in 1864 convinced Langen that this was a means to provide power in industry. Shortly afterwards, assisted by members of his family, he formed the company N.A.Otto and Cie, Cologne, the world's first engine factory. At the Paris Exhibition of 1867, the new Otto-Langen Atmospheric Gas Engine was awarded a Gold Medal, and in 1870 Crossley Bros of Manchester was appointed sole agent and manufacturer in Britain. Under Langen's guidance, the firm grew, and in 1872 it was renamed Die Gasmotoren Fabrik, employing Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach. Apart from running the business, Langen often played peacemaker when differences arose between Daimler and Otto. The success of the firm, known today as Klockner-Humboldt-Deutz, owed much to Langen's business and technical skills. Langen was a strong supporter of Otto's constant efforts to produce a better engine, and his confidence was justified by the appearance, in 1876, of Otto's four-stroke engine. The two men remained close friends until Otto's death in 1892.

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