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Gottlieb Daimler (March 17, 1834 - March 6, 1900) was an engineer, industrial designer and industrialist, born in Schorndorf (Kingdom of Württemberg, a federal state of the German Confederation), in what is now the Federal Republic of Germany. He was a pioneer of internal-combustion engines and automobile development. He invented the first high-speed petrol engine and the first four-wheel automobile.
Daimler and his lifelong business partner Wilhelm Maybach were two inventors whose dream was to create small, high speed engines to be mounted in any kind of locomotion device. They designed in 1885 a precursor of the modern petrol engine which they subsequently fitted to a two-wheeler, considered the first motorcycle and, in the next year, to a stagecoach, and a boat. They are renowned as the designers of this Grandfather Clock engine.
Later, in 1890, they founded Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG). They sold their first automobile in 1892. Daimler fell ill taking a break from the company and upon his return experienced difficulty with the other stock holders that led to his resignation in 1893 that was reversed in 1894. Soon Maybach resigned also and he returned at the same time as Daimler. In 1900 Daimler died and Wilhelm Maybach quit DMG in 1907. In 1924, the DMG management signed a long term co-operation agreement with Karl Benz's Benz & Cie., and in 1926 the two companies merged to become Daimler-Benz AG, which is now part of Daimler AG.
Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler was the son of a baker named Johannes Däumler (Daimler) and his wife Frederika, from the town of Schorndorf near Stuttgart, Württemberg. By the age of thirteen (1847), he had completed his six years of primary studies in Lateinschule where he had also had additional drawing lessons on Sundays and expressed an interest in engineering. The next year, he started studying gunsmithing; building with his teacher, Riedel, a double-barreled gun.
Again, Daimler became restless in his studies as his main interest still lay in engineering. In 1852 when eighteen, he finally decided to take up mechanical engineering, and left his hometown. He worked at several firms, including Armstrong-Whitworth, before ending up at Deutz.
In 1872 (at age thirty-eight), Gottlieb Daimler and Wilheim Maybach moved to work at the world's largest manufacturer of stationary engines of the time, the Deutz-AG-Gasmotorenfabrik in Cologne. It was half-owned by Nikolaus August 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 invented the Four-stroke cycle also known as the Otto Cycle a system characterized 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 the patent was soon challenged and overturned. Unknown to Otto, Daimler, and Maybach, in Mannheim during 1878 Karl Benz was concentrating all his efforts on creating a reliable two-stroke gas engine based on the same principle. Benz finished his engine on December 31, 1878, New Year's Eve, and was granted a patent for his engine in 1879.
Meanwhile, serious personal differences arose between Daimler and Otto, reportedly with Otto being jealous of Daimler, because of his university background and knowledge. Daimler was fired in 1880, receiving 112 Gold-marks in Deutz-AG shares in compensation for the patents of both Daimler and Maybach. Maybach resigned later.
After leaving Deutz-AG, Daimler and Maybach started to work together. In 1882, they moved back to Stuttgart in Southern Germany, purchasing a cottage in Cannstatt's Taubenheimstrasse, with 75,000 Gold marks from the compensation from Deutz-AG. In the garden, they added a brick extension to the roomy glass-fronted summerhouse and this became their workshop. Eventually, their activities alarmed the neighbors who called the police and reported them as suspected counterfeiters. The police obtained a key from their 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 byproduct of petroleum. The main distillates of petroleum at the time were lubricating oil, kerosene (burned as lamp fuel), and benzine, which up to then was used mainly as a cleaner and was sold in pharmacies
.In late 1885,[citation needed] Daimler and Maybach developed the first of their petrol engines, which featured:
In 1885, they created a carburetor which mixed gasoline 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 cm² 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 baptized the Standuhr (Grandfather Clock), because Daimler thought it resembled an old pendulum clock. This is probably the same internal-combustion engine referred to by the American author and historian Henry Adams, who describes the "Daimler motor" and its great speed from his visit to the 1900 Paris Exposition in his autobiography.
In November 1885, Daimler installed a smaller version of this engine in a wooden bicycle, creating the first motorcycle (Patent 36-423impff & Sohn "Vehicle with gas or petroleum drive machine"). It was named the "riding car" (Reitwagen). Maybach rode it for three kilometers (two miles) alongside the river Neckar, from Cannstatt to Untertürkheim, reaching 12 kilometres per hour (7 mph).
Also in 1885, but unknown to Maybach and Daimler, only sixty miles away in Mannheim, Karl Benz built the first true automobile using an integral design for a motorized vehicle with one of his own engines and he was granted a patent for his motorwagen dated January 29, 1886.
On March 8, 1886, Daimler and Maybach secretly brought a stagecoach made by Wilhelm Wafter into the house, telling the neighbors it was a birthday gift for Mrs. Daimler. Maybach supervised the installation of a larger 1.1 hp 462 cc (28 cu in) (70×120 mm, 2.76×4.72 in) version of the Grandfather Clock engine into this stagecoach and it became the first four-wheeled vehicle to reach 16 kilometres per hour (10 mph). The engine power was transmitted by a set of belts. As with the motorcycle, it also was tested on the road to Untertürkheim where nowadays the Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion is situated.
Driven by Daimler's desire to use the engine as many ways as possible, Daimler and Maybach also used their engine in other types of transport including:
They sold their first foreign licenses for engines in 1887 and Maybach went as company representative to the Paris World's Fair to show their achievements.