Gottlieb Daimler: Greenhouse Raid, Grandfather Clock Engine, Phoenix

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Gottlieb Daimler was born in 1834 in Schorndorf, the son of a master baker, and apprenticed as a gunsmith, passing his 1852 exam with a pair of engraved double-barreled pistols before studying mechanical engineering. He built locomotives at Grafenstaden and, at the 1862 London International Exhibition, decided steam was a dead end for personal transport. In 1863 he met the orphan Wilhelm Maybach, his lifelong design partner. From 1872 he managed the Deutz works of Nikolaus Otto, whose 1876 four-stroke engine he wanted to make small and mobile. Otto refused, the two feuded, Daimler challenged Otto's patent with Beau de Rochas's 1862 French patent, and in 1880 he left Deutz with 112,000 gold marks.

In a garden greenhouse at Cannstatt, Daimler and Maybach replaced slide-valve ignition with a hot tube and ran on ligroin, a pharmacy cleaning solvent, producing the 1883 dream engine at 750 to 900 rpm. Its 1885 grandfather clock version powered the Reitwagen, the first internal combustion motorcycle, which Maybach rode three kilometers along the Neckar. In 1886 they put a 1.1 horsepower engine in a stagecoach Daimler claimed was a birthday gift for his wife Emma, followed by a motorboat, an airship in 1888 and the 1889 Stahlradwagen. After forming DMG in 1890, he was forced out in 1893, built the Phoenix engine at the Hermann Hotel, and returned in 1895. He died in 1900.

• In 1882 police raided the greenhouse on a gardener's tip, expecting counterfeiters, and found only engine parts.
• Daimler marketed his motorboat as Oil Electrical and hid its engine under a ceramic cover.
• Phoenix-powered cars beat DMG's own entries in the 1894 Paris to Rouen race.
• Frederick Simms withheld a £17,500 license fee until DMG reinstated Daimler.
• Daimler and Carl Benz worked about 60 miles apart, never spoke, and their firms merged as Daimler-Benz in 1926.