Daimler, Gottlieb Wilhelm (1834-1900) German Engineer, Transportation Industry (Scientist)

Gottlieb Daimler, together with his partner Wil-helm Maybach, was one of the first to build a working motor vehicle, though karl friedrich benz is generally attributed with making the first successful automobile (actually a three-wheeler). Daimler and Benz worked less than a hundred miles from one another, and developed their motor vehicles at almost exactly the same time, but the two purportedly never met. About a quarter-century after Daimler’s death, his company joined forces with Benz’s. Both men are considered seminal figures in establishing the automobile industry, a development that revolutionized personal transportation.

Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler was born on March 17, 1834, in Schorndorf, near Stuttgart, Germany. He was the second of four sons born to Wilhelmine Friederike Fensterer, a dyer’s daughter. His father, Johannes Daimler, was a master baker who also ran a wine parlor. Daimler attended the local Latin school and then, starting in 1848, the Royal trade school in Stuttgart, where he trained as a gunsmith’s apprentice, constructing his journeyman’s piece in 1852— an elaborately adorned double-barreled pistol.

In 1853, the industrialist Ferdinand Stein-beis secured Daimler a job at a steam engineering works in Graffenstaden, near Strasbourg. In 1857, Daimler continued his technical education, studying mechanical engineering at the Stuttgart Polytechnic, and upon completing his course of study in 1859, he returned to his job in Graffenstaden. In 1861, he traveled to England, where he worked with engineer Joseph Whitworth in Manchester. He also visited France, where he saw a gas engine designed by J. J. E. Lenoir in Paris, inspiring him to continue his own design of a small engine that was inexpensive to run, an idea he had conceived as early as 1859.


Hired as technical manager in 1863, Daimler reorganized the mechanical engineering section of the Brudersaus Maschinenfabrik in Reutlingen. There, he met Wilhelm Maybach, and the pair remained partners throughout the rest of Daimler’s career. In 1867, Daimler married Emma Kurtz. In 1869, the Maschinenbau Gesellschaft in Karlsruhe appointed him as its director, a position he retained until 1872, when the Gasmotoren-Fabrik Deutz hired him as its technical director and Maybach as head of its design office. There, the pair worked with niko-laus august otto to perfect the Otto oil engine, a four-stroke internal combustion motor.

While in Russia on business for Deutz in 1881, Daimler conceived of the notion of "independent driving" in reaction against "overcrowded trains" and "limitations imposed by the railways." However, Deutz would not benefit from this line of innovation, as Daimler left the company the next year, taking May-bach with him. The pair installed themselves in Cannstatt (near Stuttgart), intent on developing their own internal combustion engine, but with a new twist—they intended to mount their motors in vehicles. By 1883, they had patented a design, and two years later, their second engine, nicknamed the "grandfather clock," received the German Imperial patent number 34926. Daimler and Maybach mounted this engine on a bicycle to create what they called a "riding car"—better known as a motorcycle. By 1887, Daimler and Maybach had established a factory in Seelberg to build two-cylinder V-engines.

About a hundred miles away, Karl Benz was concurrently introducing his own engine-powered vehicle, a three-wheeled contraption that is generally considered the first successful automobile. By 1889, both Benz and Daimler had developed four-wheeled motor vehicles, which they each displayed at the Paris Exhibition. Neither raised particular public interest, though two entrepreneurs—R. Panhard and E. Levassor— contracted with Daimler (and not Benz) to sell his product in France. Also in that year, Daimler’s first wife, Emma, died; he subsequently married Lina Hartmann in 1893.

The Daimler-Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG) was founded in 1890, with Daimler himself working as a deputy member of the supervisory board. However, Daimler and Maybach left the company within four years to focus their attention on exhibiting their engine around the country and entering their cars in road races, such as the first international car race from Paris to Rouen in 1894, which a Daimler car won. Daimler rejoined DMG as chairman of the supervisory board in 1895.

In 1896, a wealthy Austrian living on the French Riviera named Emil Jellinek (who also happened to be a speed freak) influenced Daimler and Maybach to design a faster engine, capable of reaching the unheard-of speed of 40 kilometers-per-hour. Daimler and Maybach reluctantly complied (worried about safety, but reassured by Jellinek’s cash payment for four such cars), and Jellinek drove the car to 42 kilometers-per-hour. Jellinek made further demands—a longer wheelbase, wider track, lower center of gravity, and a 35-horsepower engine—and secured these requests by ordering the entire production run of 36 cars.

Jellinek also requested that the new model be named after his daughter, Mercedes; the name was officially registered on June 6, 1902. However, Daimler did not live to see the dubbing of perhaps the most recognizable name in the automobile industry, as he died on March 6, 1900, in Cannstatt. A little over a quarter-century later, in 1926, the Daimler and Benz corporate entities joined forces.

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