INVENTORS HALL OF FAME
In 1885, Gottlieb Daimler, with the help of Wilhelm Maybach, developed the forerunner of the modern gas engine by advancing Nicolaus Otto's oil-powered design. Adapting the engine to a stagecoach, Daimler successfully designed the world's first four-wheeled automobile.
After earning a mechanical engineering degree from Stuttgart Polytechnic, Daimler pursued the need for a small, practical, low-powered engine. Frenchman Etienne Lenoir had designed an early model of a smaller engine, but it lacked efficiency. Noting Lenoir's pioneering concepts, Daimler and Maybach spent ten years developing a practical gasoline-powered engine.
With their new engine as the focal point, they applied their ideas to vehicles, developing and patenting a self-firing ignition starter. In 1885, the first gasoline-powered internal combustion engine was fitted onto a motorcycle.
Daimler and Maybach continued to improve gasoline-powered engines, inventing the first V-shaped, two-cylinder, four-stroke engine. That engine was the foundation for today's automobile engines. Daimler founded the Daimler Motoren-Gesellschaft in 1890 to build engines according to his designs.
In 1998, the Daimler and Chrysler companies merged, forming DaimlerChrysler, one of the world's leading car manufacturers.
The above information was supplied by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation, Inc., Room 1D01-Crystal Plaza 3, 2021 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, Virginia 22202. Videotapes and printed materials are currently available. For more information, visit the Foundation's web site at: http://www.invent.org
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