First Automobile part I

Any talk about who made the first automobile invariably generates immense debate. Early wheeled vehicles involved some rudimentary form of engine which used combustion as its core to get the whole moving. Steam, gun powder, gas, paraffin powered projectiles were made and discarded all over Europe in the period 1850 onwards. In fact, in principle, many had contemplated the theory of enclosed combustion to make things go forward but none of them could keep this combustion sustained for long.Around the late 1860s, the efforts of Nikolaus August Otto and his partner Eugen Langen developed what they called the first atmospheric gas engine. It won the first prize at the 7857 Paris World Exhibition because it proved superior to all other types of engine. However, the atmospheric gas engine never got going as intended and Otto and Langen turned onto a new form of development which resulted in the Otto four-stroke engine in 1876. This now stands as the defining moment in automobile history because it spurred the growth and development of motorised vehicles unlike at any time previous in history. And involved in the success of this engine were also Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach.

For Gottlieb Daimler, son of a baker and with an inventive bent for things technical, his early days were spent learning the intricacies of the engineering trade, be it in gunsmithy or in locomotive construction or in machine tool design. In 7865, Daimler was made the technical manager charged with reorganizing the Bruderhaas. Engineering Works at Reutlingen and it was here that he came into contact with the outstandingly talented young draughtsman and engineer Wilhelm Maybach. Maybach, who was an orphan (his parents died when he was just 10 years old), had come up in life thanks to the Bruderhaas which ran an orphanage and also schooled its wards in every walk of life. So when it came time to repay his gratitude he also enrolled in the Bruderhaas Engineering Works and caught Gottlieb Daimler’s eye. Thus began a most memorable partnership between the two which was to last till the very end. When Daimler joined the Maschinenbaugesellschaft Karlsruhe in 7869 as ‘Chairman of all the Workshops’, Maybach followed him there. From now on they were very much a strong team and almost inseparable. In 1872, Daimler joined Gastmotorenfabrik Deutz AG as its technical director while Maybach became the head of its design office. Here along with these two the Otto four-stroke petrol engine was developed and it was evident to one and all that finally here was an engine smaller and lighter while also being superior in performance to the somewhat large and unwieldy gas engines of the times. When Otto solved the problem of the ignition system on his four-stroke engine, Gasmotorenfabrik Deutz grew into a giant firm producing engines ranging in outputs from one half horsepower to eight horsepower. However it must be said that the physical size of the engines did give some cause for concern and it was in this regard that Daimler and Otto began jousting. Daimler wanted to perfect the Otto engine to be small and compact enough to power a carriage but a clash of wills, not to mention considerable ego, meant that the writing was on the wall. it was therefore not surprising when Daimler left Deutz and set up shop on his own. The ever faithful Maybach followed him and the duo set to work at Cannstatt in October7882. Their joint effort was concentrated almost exclusively on the rapid revolution engine needed to propel vehicles and for this the Otto engine needed an even more positive and foolproof ignition system. Daimler and Maybach also obviously felt it had to be made smaller and lighter so as to increase its field of application, especially its suitability for mobile use. The experiments by Daimler and Maybach resulted in a major breakthrough in 1883 when they happened to get the ignition perfected on the first high revolution Daimler gasoline engine. In fact they were successful in deriving a patent for this motor, patent no. 28022, granted on December 16, 1883 to be precise. Reading through the text of this patent - it concerned self-ignition as the very essence of the patent along with the rapid compression of the mixture, and ignition by the insulated, hot cylinder walls and the hot bottom of the piston as the primary features. A thin-walled tube projecting into the cylinder, closed off at one end and kept red hot by a burner was to initiate ignition of the mixture under compression but it was only intended to have effect up to the point of self-ignition. In practice, this is where the first difficulties appeared. The insulated cylinder walls interfered with the heat transfer, so that the place where self-ignition occurred had to be inside of the incandescent tube. This made it necessary to keep the tube glowing hot right throughout the operation of the engine. Daimler and Maybach successfully licked this problem and this marked the most important step in the development of the highspeed engine. With no magneto spark ignition available then, the incandescent tube ignition made it possible to get round the clumsy and difficult use of the battery of those days. But the fact that this ignition was unregulated made the transition back to regulated ignition necessary as higher performance characteristics were demanded of the engine. On December 22, 1883, Daimler took out another patent (patent no. 2824, wherein he invented a new kind of ignition regulator which along with a section on valve actuation helped reinforce the earlier patent. By this time the Daimler rapid revolution engine was turning away nicely between seven to nine hundred revolutions per minute. However, much work still needed to be done and development aims now focused on achieving configuration changes. Air cooling gave way to water cooling, a trait which became basic to the design from then on. The open horizontal form of the engine with an exterior flywheel was discarded and the fundamental step was initiated to make it an upright design enclosed in a dust free and oil tight housing containing the flywheel as well (legend has it that this engine thanks to its architecture was jokingly referred to within the company as the ‘grandfather clock’). Thus was born the first ever automotive engine. This model based on patent no. 34925 dated April 3, 1885 was Daimler's first ever vehicle engine. At this juncture mention must be made of the fact that Daimler had in mind an engine that would not only serve commercial purposes but also be put to use in a wide variety of vehicles. Keeping this in mind, the engine had also to take up as less space as was practical and in this regard Maybach did exemplary work by aiming for the greatest output within the smallest dimensions, least weight, and the greatest economy of parts, a governing principle of design which is still valid to this day. Maybach built just such an engine of one half horsepower which was granted parent no. 36423 dated August 29, 1885. This was a small engine and it was deliberately kept air-cooled. The duo had to decide on the type of vehicle they wanted to fit it in and so they devised a ‘riding car’ which was nothing but a motorcycle as we know it today. This was the world's first motorcycle and featured a twin spar wooden frame with no suspension whatsoever. It had two small sized outrigger wheels and final drive was by a leather belt in the classic position as we know it to be. The Daimler motorcycle was tested and run for the first time in November 1885. It held a lot of promise but so fascinated was Daimler that he had finally got mass mobility within his reach, that he decided to develop larger vehicles instead of the motorcycle which was at best a means f or a single person to commute on. Not surprisingly, this bike was discarded and forgotten by Daimler and the company has never built a two-wheeler since then. Just for the record, it was another ten years before the world got the first motorised two-wheelers but they came from other marques. The original Daimler motorcycle yet remains in existence to this day at the excellent Daimler-Benz museum in Stuttgart where I happened to see it during one of my visits to this treasure trove of automobile history a year ago. As you can see from the colour schematic of this bike (featured in the article), it has all the ingredients of the modern day motorcycle clearly encompassed in its design. Of course, being the forerunner of the automobile it lacked a certain hint of practicality but if Daimler and Maybach had persisted with it, who knows where motorcycling would have gone on to. Just as cars with the three-pointed star are held in high esteem, we could also have had two-wheelers which could have been shining stars in their own right. The engine, rather than vehicles, was the main thing which propelled Daimler’s thoughts and once he had got his ‘riding car’ moving to his liking he developed a new engine which he planned to install in a coach. This engine was also readied around the same time as the motorcycle and this featured cylinder dimensions of 70mm x 120mm making for a displacement of 462cc. This engine developed 1.1hp at the then high speed of 650 revolutions per minute. As was Daimler's brief he did not make the coach but ordered one from Wimpff und Sohn in Stuttgart. An element of secrecy was maintained in this project and Daimler had told the coach maker that he wanted it “handsome but very solidly built” as it was to be a birthday present for his wife. Once the coach was delivered it was sent straight across to the Esslingen Engineering Works to have the engine installed. The two belt pulleys on the engine could be connected, according to choice of ratio, to a countershaft that drove two pinions which turned ring gears fastened to the back wheels. Instead of a differential, Daimler put slip couplings on each end of the transmission shaft. This engine was a water-cooled one and Daimler devised a cooling system whereby the hot water was pumped to a laminated radiator placed in the rear of the vehicle