Automobile Biographies: An Account of the Lives and the Work of Those Who Have Been Identified with the Invention and Development of Self-Propelled Vehicles on the Common RoadsWeeks, Lyman Horace
History
Automobile Biographies: An Account of the Lives and the Work of Those Who Have Been Identified with the Invention and Development of Self-Propelled Vehicles on the Common Roads
Weeks, Lyman Horace
Automobiles -- History
The early education of Carl Benz was acquired at the Lyceum until his
seventeenth year and then at the Technical High School of his native city
for four more years. This was followed by three years of practical work in
the shops of the Karlsruhe Machine Works. When he was twenty-eight years
of age, in 1872, after further experience in Mannheim, Pforzheim and
Vienna, he opened workshops of his own in Mannheim.
In 1880 he began to commercialize a two-cycle stationary engine. In 1883
he organized his business as Benz & Co., and produced his first vehicle in
1884. In the beginning of 1885 his three-wheeled vehicle ran through the
streets of Mannheim, Germany, attracting much attention with its noisy
exhaust. This was the subject of his patent dated January 29, 1886,
claimed by him to be the first German patent on a light oil motor vehicle.
This embodied a horizontal flywheel belt transmission through a
differential and two chains to the wheels; but it is noteworthy primarily
as having embodied a four-cycle, water jacketed, three-quarter horse-power
engine, with electric ignition.
In 1888, the Benz Company exhibited their vehicles at the Munich
Exposition, where they attracted wide attention. This was followed by the
exhibition at the Paris show in 1889, by the engineer Roger, of another
vehicle made under license that Roger had acquired from Benz and
constructed by Panhard and Levassor.
[Illustration: CARL BENZ]
While in 1899 the firm was converted into a stock company of three million
marks capital, and then employed three hundred men, Carl Benz remained the
leading spirit of the concern, technically, while the commercial work came
under the direction of Julius Ganz. The able co-operation of these two has
established the world-famous automobile enterprise looked upon by many as
the pioneer producing works of its kind in Germany. Of late years motor
boats have also been made by them, but their automobiles and those of
their affiliated companies or licensees in other countries still stand in
the first rank.
GOTTLIEB DAIMLER
Born at Schorndorf, Wurtemburg, March 17, 1834. Died at Cannstadt, near
Stuttgart, March 6, 1899.
After receiving a technical and scientific training at the Polytechnic
School at Stuttgart, 1852-59, Daimler spent two years, 1861-63, as an
engineer in the Karlsruhe Machine Works, becoming foreman there. In 1872
he entered the Gas Engine Works at Deutz, near Cologne, and became
director of that establishment. Within ten years that shop, better known
as the Otto Engine Works, grew from a small place into a large,
well-organized and famous establishment. In 1882 he removed to Cannstadt
to give his entire attention to the light-weight internal-combustion auto
motor, with which his career was so completely identified, and the
successful application of which earned for him the title, "the father of
the automobile," in Germany, though that is, in fact, contested by those
familiar with the work of Benz.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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