page_title: Gottlieb Daimler
section_title: Independent inventor of small, high speed engines, 1882
hierarchical_section_title: Gottlieb Daimler / Independent inventor of small, high speed engines, 1882
caption_attribution_description: Wilhelm Maybach
context_page_description: Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler was a German engineer, industrial designer and industrialist born in Schorndorf, in what is now Germany. He was a pioneer of internal-combustion engines and automobile development. He invented the high-speed liquid petroleum-fuelled engine.
  Daimler and his lifelong business partner Wilhelm Maybach were two inventors whose goal was to create small, high-speed engines to be mounted in any kind of locomotion device. In 1883 they designed a horizontal cylinder layout compressed charge liquid petroleum engine that fulfilled Daimler's desire for a high speed engine which could be throttled, making it useful in transportation applications. This engine was called Daimler's Dream.
  In 1885 they designed a vertical cylinder version of this engine which they subsequently fitted to a two-wheeler, the first internal combustion motorcycle which was named the Petroleum Reitwagen and, in the next year, to a coach, and a boat. Daimler called this engine the grandfather clock engine because of its resemblance to a large pendulum clock.
  In 1890, they converted their partnership into a stock company Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft. They sold their first automobile in 1892.
context_section_description: At Cannstatt, Daimler and the more creative thinking Maybach devised their engine. At Daimler's insistence, it eliminated "the clumsy, complicated slide-valve ignition", in favor of a hot tube system invented by an Englishman named Watson, since electrical systems functioned too slowly.
  In the summer of 1882 Daimler moved to Cannstatt (just outside of Stuttgart at that time), purchasing a cottage in Cannstatt's Taubenheimstrasse, with 75,000 Gold marks from the compensation from Deutz-AG. Maybach followed in September of that year. In the garden, they added a brick extension to the roomy glass-fronted summer house and this became their workshop. Their activities alarmed the neighbors who reported them to the police as suspected counterfeiters. The police obtained a key from the 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 commonly available petroleum fraction. The main distillates of petroleum at the time were lubricating oil, kerosene (burned as lamp fuel), and ligroin (Petroleum Naptha), which up to then was used mainly as a cleaner and was sold in pharmacies. "Leichtbenzin, wie es damals üblich und in der Apotheke zu bekommen war", blickt Oldtimer-Experte Michael Plag zurück. "Das ist ein verbrennungsfähiger Kraftstoff - Hexan N." [English]"Mineral spirits were common and easy to get at the pharmacy", recalls classic car expert Michael Plag. "This is a combustion-efficient fuel - hexane N."
caption: Wilhelm Maybach ca 1900
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