by Ross Finlay (06 Mar 00)

Today is the 100th anniversary of the death of Gottlieb Daimler, the German designer of the first compact, light-weight, comparatively high-revving petrol engine. The engine, in fact, which made motor cars a practical proposition.

Daimler engines built under licence by Panhard-Levassor and Peugeot were in at the start of the French motor industry, and the success of the Daimler business in Italy was one of the factors which decided Giovanni Agnelli to co-found Fiat.

A Daimler car exhibited at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (the company's American licencee was piano maker William Steinway) went on display before any of the pioneering US manufacturers were in production.

A century on, his name still takes precedence in the titles of Daimler-Benz and DaimlerChrysler. And when you bear in mind that the late-Victorian Daimler company of Coventry, more recently a Jaguar subsidiary, is now an element within Ford . . . well, no. These days, that's just a coincidence.

Gottlieb Daimler was born in 1834, was apprenticed to a gunsmith, worked at a locomotive factory near Strasbourg and then a band-saw factory in Paris, and spent most of 1861/62 in England, employed at various engineering works in Oldham, Leeds and Manchester.

From 1863 till 1868, back in Germany, he managed a part-charitable engineering workshop staffed mainly by orphans, the disabled, and the poor. One of the orphans was Wilhelm Maybach, with whom he later left to join the Deutz gas engine works, where one of the co-owners was Nikolaus Otto.

Within a few years, Otto came up with the four-stroke compression engine. But it was Daimler and Maybach who turned that clumsy and inefficient machine into a best-seller. However, there was a great falling-out between Otto and Daimler, the latter was sacked, and he went off to start his own engine company, taking Maybach with him.

They set up in the Stuttgart suburb of Cannstatt, and the Daimler-Benz headquarters are still in Stuttgart, although in the district of Untertürkheim, to the present day.

The summerhouse in Daimler's garden was pressed into service as a workshop, and that's where the two partners - not only experimenting on their own account, but also rifling through old patents and making sure they didn't offend any of Otto's - built their first engine.

Its statistics don't sound very exciting now, but a 100cc engine producing 0.25bhp at 600rpm was way in advance of anything else at the time. It was steadily improved, and in 1885 Maybach was able to make a 3km test ride on a two-wheeler in which one of their engines was installed - the world's first motor-cycle.

A four-wheeled carriage was the next test vehicle, managing a speed of 16kph with a 1.5hp engine when tested in 1887.

The partners then built a proper factory, went into production, and turned out engines which were used to power not just road vehicles, but also a light railway locomotive and even an airship which made its first flight in 1888.

A better financed Daimler Engines Company was formed in 1890, but the other directors reneged on a promise to give Maybach a seat on the board. He left. Later, Daimler was elbowed out of his position as technical director, and as the whole badly-run company headed towards the brink, he too resigned - although he paid off many of its debts - and left the others to it.

Re-enter Frederick Simms, who, as part of a deal which involved him taking over the rights for an engine Maybach had designed before leaving the company, insisted that he and Daimler should be re-instated.

Simms got his way, and the reunited friends rapidly put the company back on the rails. They built some of the best engines of the latter years of the 19th century, and developed many improvements which every other manufacturer had to incorporate too.

Daimler died on March 6th, 1900, having set a great industrial enterprise on its way.

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