Gottlieb Daimler

The gasoline-powered automobile wasn't created by a single individual any more than the spacecraft or the submarine. In marking the 175th anniversary of his birth, however, it's appropriate to review the life accomplishments of Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler. If he'd instead devoted his life to brewing, or to creating stained-glass heraldry in halls of learning, the car would have still existed. Perhaps not as soon, though, since Daimler commanded its primitive technology and was a bond between some early automotive deep thinkers.

In his youth, spent in what was then the German kingdom of Württemberg, Daimler did indeed demonstrate an early affinity for using his eyes and hands artfully, first in freehand at a Latin school. As then customary, he became a craftsman's apprentice, the understudy to a master gunsmith, hand-making a pistol in 1852. It was ancient practice to him, as steam engines and industrial machinery were both transforming the world. He was extraordinarily lucky to win a study grant from Ferdinand Steinbeis, an architect of the early German iron industry and patron of technical students, a little-known hero of industrialization in the unified German Empire.

Daimler's first post-school engine was the kind that burned coal and ran on rails, but by the late 1860s, he was working on the early transition of Karlsruhe into a manufacturing region. In doing so, he met the youthful engineer, Wilhelm Maybach, who became a lifelong friend and business ally. Part of the production boom around this time was the expansion of Deutz, which had begun production of a novel internal-combustion engine designed by Nikolaus Otto, and which burned atomized petroleum vapors. A Deutz principal, Gustav Langen, needed an experienced manager, and hired Daimler.

The unity of purpose between Daimler, Otto and Maybach came to revolutionize the history of transportation. Otto's four-stroke engine was bulky and slow until Daimler and Maybach got hold of it. Friction developed between Otto and Daimler, who was ousted from Deutz in 1882, but the longtime friends decided to go on their own in a workshop on Daimler's newly purchased estate in Cannstatt, outside Stuttgart. In 1883, Maybach adapted a British-patented hot-tube ignition to their engine, a common burner-like system that long predated invention of the controlled spark. Their vertical engine, with a fully enclosed crankcase, turned up to 700 RPM. Two years later, it powered the world's first motorcycle.

As designed, the Daimler engine was intended to be fitment-capable in any existing wagon or other road vehicle. By all indications, he first fitted it to a small carriage in 1887, before opening a new plant and installing the engine in a small rail locomotive and a fire pump. Daimler had studied in France under Steinbeis's patronage, and after Maybach created a twin-cylinder version of their engine, Daimler assigned an ex-Deutz colleague named Eduard Sarazin as its licensee in France. Sarazin died almost immediately, but his widow married one of the partners that soon formed Panhard et Levassor.

While incorporating his own engine works in 1890, Daimler lost Maybach, who left in fury after shareholders reneged on a promise to name him to their board. That set events in motion that ended in Daimler being cashed out of his own company in 1894, though he returned after it went into liquidation. Daimler died in 1900, while his son, Paul, and Maybach were in the early stages of designing the first Mercedes 35hp for Emil Jellinek. Contrary to a frequent misconception, history indicates that Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz never met one another. Their respective companies did not merge into Daimler-Benz AG until 1926, three years before Benz died.