Internal-Combustion Inventors

Lenoir and Marcus had shown the feasibility of the internal-combustion engines, but both lacked faith in their own enterprises and abandoned their efforts. Closest to the mark in the judgment of historians is another pair of inventors who had faith in the future of the motorcar as well as in themselves. They worked doggedly (and unbeknownst to each other) to find the missing pieces of a puzzle that had been plaguing automotive inventors through the years: how to propel the horseless carriage. Carl Freidrich Benz and Gottlich Wilhelm Daimler worked separately (and at almost the same moment) in Germany; each designing and building the world's first commercially successful cars. These are, for all intents and purposes, the direct linear antecedents of the modern automobile. Benz's first creation was not very impressive, either in design nor in initial road test. It was a fragile, carriage-like three-wheeler with tubular framework, mounted on a Benz-designed, one-horsepower, one-cylinder engine. The engine was a refinement of the four-stroke engine designed by Nikolaus Otto (another German), who had refined his from Lenoir's two-stroke engine. Even though Benz's creation was awkward and frail, it incorporated some essential elements that would characterize the modern vehicle: electrical ignition, differential, mechanical valves, carburetor, engine cooling system, oil and grease cups for lubrication, and a braking system. He obtained a patent on a "carriage with gasoline engine" in 1886. About seventy-five miles from Carl Benz, Daimler worked diligently to design a better internal-combustion engine. He was satisfied that he had succeeded in 1833, when he took out a patent on what he believed was a more efficient, four-stroke, gasoline-fueled engine. He first mounted his engine on a sturdy bicycle, a two-wheeler, which ran satisfactorily on its test run in 1885. This was the prototype of the modern motorcycle. In 1887, Daimler, encouraged by this success and by experience, installed his engine in a four-wheeled, two-passenger vehicle. The engine had only a few more horsepower than Benz's, but it was lighter and ran at a much higher speed - 900 rpm as compared to Benz's 300 rpm. It was the first example of a high-speed, internal- combustion engine. Daimler and Benz argued heatedly concerning each other's claim to fame and prestige. Daimler insisted that he had successfully tested his engine on a bicycle before Benz had patented his tricycle and had, in any case, been the first to patent a four-wheeled car. Benz conceded that Daimler invented the motorcycle, but he insisted his tricycle was the first motorcar. These claims are still argued to this day by people who care; historians give both men a lot of credit: Daimler for his high-speed engine; Benz for the features of water cooling, electric ignition and differential gears. Benz and Daimler continued separately and competitively, to develop improved engines and refined vehicles to put them in. When Gottlich died in 1900, his company removed his name from the car he had created and affixed "Mercedes," for Mercedes Jellinck, the daughter of an influential distributor who lived in France. In 1926, when Carl Benz was 82 (he lived three more years), the companies merged into one firm. These two inventive giants, who worked so hard and lived less than seventy-five miles apart, never met one another, but they poised the world for entry into the Automobile Age. Just as the 19th-century was making its way into the 20th, the world was little inclined to be led in the direction of automobiles - except for those who had money enough to indulge their fancies, and in France, where motorcar production was beginning to assume some significant economical measures. The wide boulevards of Paris, and the fine paved roads radiating out of the French capital, were ideal settings for rich sportsmen to show off their noisy toys. By 1895, there were so many self-propelled vehicles puttering around the city that the French Academy coined a new word to the French language to describe them. The word was "automobile." One of the first vehicles to be officially designated an automobile was a car which is now considered to be the real prototype of modern cars. It was a Daimler-powered vehicle built in 1892 by the Parisian carriage-making firm, Panhard and Levassor. The "Panhard" marked the appearance of the automobile's classic design: engine in front, supplying power to a gearbox behind it; gearbox connected by chain drive to the rear drive wheels. It had four forward speeds and a reverse, and an 1894 model made headlines when it covered a 750-mile distance from Paris to Rouen in forty-eight hours at an average speed of fifteen miles per hour.