The German Genius

Funk patented a system in which an external burner kept a hollow tube at white heat, the mixture being forced into the tube by the ascending piston. Daimler realized this was the way forward. 23
    The patent Daimler was awarded (No. 28022) on December 16, 1883, was for the first fast-running engine. Curiously, however, Daimler did not at first intend his engine to be used for anything other than stationary work. But when he and Maybach saw that this engine could run at 900 rpm, their thoughts turned toward a motorcycle. This was patented in August 1885—it had two speeds, was cooled by a fan, and had iron tires. The engine, of half a horsepower, was situated behind the seat. To start the engine, a burner was lit that heated the ignition tube and the engine was cranked in the usual manner. The power from the engine was conveyed to the rear wheel by a belt. During the winter of 1885–86, Daimler’s motorcycle was tested on a frozen lake in Cannstatt, a ski being used in place of the front wheel. He too undertook road trials after dark, in his case so that teething troubles could be ironed out in private. In November 1885 his eldest son, Paul, drove from their house to Untertürkheim, three kilometers away, and made it home.
    The first Daimler car took to the road in the autumn of 1886, between Esslingen and Cannstatt. In the archives of Daimler-Benz A.G., there is an account of these early-morning trials, written by Wilhelm Maybach and Paul Daimler. 24 They say the vehicle ran “quite well” and that speeds of 18 kph were attained. Daimler put his engine in boats and even designed a railcar driven by a Daimler engine. In 1889 they moved decisively ahead with a vehicle with a tubular frame through which the coolant (water) circulated. Engines remained at the rear of cars until 1896 when they were placed under the hood (Daimler being much taken with the designs of the Frenchman Émile Levassor).
    It was not all plain sailing, but Daimler prospered more than Benz. Paul Daimler, Maybach, and Emil Jellinek, a rich Austrian who was consul-general at Nice (where many early car trials and rallies were held), collaborated on a model that would put all rivals in the shade; it was more stylish and had many technical innovations, not the least of which was the relative silence of its engine. 25 It was unveiled in final form in Nice in 1901 when, because there was such anti-German feeling in France in the wake of the Franco-Prussian war, it was named after Jellinek’s daughter, Mercedes.
    Though Benz, Daimler, and Mercedes are the best-known names in automobile history, Rudolf Diesel is almost as important. Born in Paris in 1858 to parents who were Bavarian immigrants, he was educated at Munich Polytechnic. There he heard a lecture by Professor Carl von Linde on thermodynamics, in which Linde explained that the steam engines then so popular used only around 10 percent of their fuel to perform useful work, a shortcoming that stayed in Diesel’s mind. 26 When he graduated from Augsberg Technical School, he was the youngest person ever to achieve that honor and he achieved the highest-ever marks. He impressed Linde so much that the professor got him a job at a factory in Switzerland selling the ice machines that Linde had helped develop.
    Obsessed with engines of one sort or another, Diesel soon invented a machine to make clear ice. 27 The Swiss company was not interested, but French brewers were and he found a ready market for his machine back in Paris. His real breakthrough came in 1893, when he was thirty-five, at which point he took out a patent for a “Combustion Power Engine,” the engine we know today as the diesel engine. 28 The difference between Diesel’s engine and the internal combustion engine is simple but profound. In the gasoline engine an air-fuel mixture is drawn into the cylinder, where it is ignited by a spark plug. In Diesel’s engine only air is drawn into the cylinder. With no fuel present it can be compressed about twice as much, driving the temperature much higher. At the right moment, fuel is injected into the cylinder, where it ignites spontaneously.
    It is a simpler system but, in the early days, the fact that the engine operated at very high temperatures and pressures meant that they were too much for the materials then available, making his engines unreliable. In 1897, however, the first Diesel engine factory was built at Augsberg and he prospered. Unfortunately, sloppy management of his money