The pioneers of automaking

In this same period, Nikolaus August Otto, of Cologne, began to take an interest in the problems of the internal combustion engine based on the studies of Lenoir. After a series of experiments conducted In collaboration with his brother, Wilhelm, he requested a patent from the Prussian government, in 1861, for the use of a mixture of gas contained in the cylinder of an engine ignited by an electric spark, making it clear that this does not concern a combination of gas and air, but of vapour emanating from a hydrocarbon and from liquids. The patent was not granted, as no fundamental difference was recognised between Otto's and Lenoir's engine, which used gas as fuel.

Nevertheless, Otto persevered in his studies, and after the construction of two unsuccessful engines he was able to enter into a profitable partnership with a German engineer and businessman, Eugen Langen.

During the first phases of his studies, Otto became interested in Beau de Rochas' cycle, patenting and producing his first four-stroke motor in 1866-67, which proved to be defective. Unfortunately, he:; then abandoned this line of development and for more than a decade his studies and his industrial activity were concentrated on engines! similar to those of Lenoir and Barsanti-Matteucci, that is, the so - called atmospheric type — without compression.

These first atmospheric engines, deriving in 1866 from the partnership between Otto and Langen, were uncommonly heavy and noisy, but they displayed many advantages over the Lenoir motor: the fuel consumption, for example, was reduced to exactly one half. Within a few years, however, the characteristics of the Otto-Langen engine had been considerably improved, and a regular series production — if one can call it that — began in the factories at Deutz, near Cologne. These engines were still fed by gas and were constructed for stationary purposes.

When Gottlieb Daimler, an engineer with wide production experience, joined the Otto-Langen company, a new impetus was given to research and design in the Deutz factory. Daimler had already approached Lenoir with the proposition of building an improved version of the latter's engine, but the old Frenchman was not convinced. Later, Daimler was impressed by de Rochas' treatise and together with Wilhelm Maybach, who had been his assistant before he moved to Deutz, he reorganised the company's production, creating considerably increased capacity. By 1875 over 2,000 Otto-Langen motors had been sold in Europe and many more had been built under license. In the meantime, however Daimler and Maybach had made a series of studies on the four-stroke cycle and the first paper was granted in 1876. One year later, their first engine of this type was built and showed an enormous improvement over early engines in silence and reliability. Ignition in this single cylinder horizontal engine was by two jets of flame alternately exposed. The engine was exhibited at the Paris Exhibition in 1878, and may be considered the basis for the mainstream of subsequent internal combustion engine development.

There were others, of course, experimenting with internal combustion engines.

Interest in the internal combustion engine was not limited to Europe. Indeed, one of the world's first self-moving vehicles with an internal combustion engine was built by George Brayton, a young engineer of Boston who subsequently showed a later engine at the Philadelphia Centennial, in 1876, after being encouraged by the reception of his earlier, cruder version. Five different Otto gas engines were in the exhibition, including the latest and most advanced one. But in respect to carburation — effected by means of air passing over a felt pad fed with petrol—Brayton's engine had certain advantages over the European models.

This Philadelphia show marked the beginning of the rapid conversion of the Americans to the internal combustion engine. Up to that time, steam vehicles had dominated the scene. But now considerable numbers of Otto's and Brayton's motors were built and they were quickly put to a variety of uses in agriculture and industry and even for powering small fishing boats, their first application for locomotion in America.

The same show inspired the enthusiasm of George Baldwin Selden, of Rochester, a young lawyer with a mechanical bent, who set out to modify Brayton's engine for road propulsion. In 1879, he obtained a patent which, as we shall see, was to form the base for the development of the American motor industry for many years. The association between Otto and Daimler was not to last forever. There were increasing differences of opinion of a technical nature between the two men and in 1882 Daimler left Cologne and returned to his home, where he began a series of studies to improve the Otto engine, particularly in the matters of weight, speed of rotation, and ignition. One year later, in 1883, the first Daimler-Maybach engine with hot-tube ignition was built — once more a big step forward compared with the Otto engines whose engine speeds did not exceed 200 rpm; this new engine of Daimler ran at 900. The ignition system consisted of a tube passing into the cylinder head which was maintained at high temperature by a burner outside the cylinder. While Daimler and Maybach were moving to relatively light, high-speed engines, another German, Karl Benz, was working on the application of petrol engines to locomotion. In 1885 he built his first tricycle powered by an internal combustion engine, at the same time as Daimler was testing a motorized cycle. Both produced four-wheeled vehicles the following year. This was not an accident. The spirit of the times, the progress already made in motoring research, and the previous work of Otto led to the simultaneous construction of two vehicles of fundamental importance. But the engine that Benz mounted in his tricycle was very different from Daimler's light, high-speed single vertical-cylindered unit with hot-tube ignition. The Benz engine was heavy and slow-moving] producing 4/5 hp at 200 rpm in a single horizontal cylinder. Transmission was by chain and the wheels were spoked. Maximum speed was around 10 mph. Benz' ignition was by means of magneto and sparking plug. The engine was rear-mounted in the tricycle, which was capable of around 12 mph.

Benz built his four-wheeler the following year, with a mechanic layout similar to that of his tricycle. It boasted an engine of 1.5 hp anc a maximum speed of 12 mph. He immediately began to organise production, which was continued obstinately unchanged for the next 15 years or so. He sold his first car in 1887. But it was only in 1889 that Daimler himself began serious production of a model in which he had satisfactorily solved problems of ignition and carburation.

For the former, after some attempts at electrical ignition, he returned to an improved version of the hot-tube system. For the latter, the invention of the float-type carburettor by Maybach gave a more regular feed to the engine—an arrow V, two-cylinder with piston acting on a single crankshaft, with automatic inlet valves, water cooling, and an engine speed of 750 rpm. By 1890, Daimler was producing models at the rate of 350 per year and had granted around 1,900 licences for his engine's production. Thus it was that while both men had built prototypes of the motor car in the same year. Benz was undoubtedly the first man to produce a practicable model and to do so in quantity for commercial sale. Nevertheless, Daimler's engine was more advanced, and was to have much more influence on the ultimate development.

It was from the negotiations for one of Daimler's many licences It the Panhard and Levassor company entered the field of motor ir construction, an event that was to be of crucial importance. The means by which the negotiations were carried to a conclusion present I'l pleasing element of romance. An old friend of Daimler, an engineer Sarazin, was the agent through whom the first contacts were made for the exploitation of the Cannstatt engine in France. Sarazin Chose two other old friends as those with whom to negotiate—Panhard and Levassor. These two had been partners for some years in a Company specialising in the manufacture of woodworking machinery, which had been founded in 1845 by a certain Perin by this time dead. During the discussions, Sarazin died and it was left to his widow to take them in hand and to carry them to successful conclusion. From this agreement was born not only a technical-commercial collaboration of fundamental importance to the development of the motor car, but also a marriage — in 1890, the enterprising and courageous widow of Sarazin married Emile Levassor.

Thus, in 1889, Panhard and Levassor began their production of vehicles which were to dominate the last decade of the 19th century lind were to give the motor car two vital characteristics—its definite mechanical elements and layout, and its reliability.

Their first model was little more than experimental, but in 1894 there issued from their factory—which had been completely re-equipped for motor car production—a second vehicle which was to be the first definitive motor car. It represented the essential break with the horse-drawn carriage and enabled the car to develop along a line dictated by its own characteristics and uses.

-1900-

We have thus brought the story of the motor car to the beginning of the 20th century.

It is now opportune to look at the motor car of 1900, whose manufacture was spreading rapidly on both sides of the Atlantic, in particular to see what level of technical progress the horseless carriage had achieved in the first 20 years of its life.

So far as the engine is concerned, the most usual layout was to use two cylinders. Several varieties were known at that time, differing often in these details which were necessary to get around competitors' patents. Thus there were inline twins, horizontally-opposed (or flat twins), and vee-twins. Many manufacturers, however, still used the single cylinder — De Dion, for example, was its strong supporter. Even in America, where minds were certainly not closed to technical progress, the single cylinder had its advocates, including Packard. The four-cylinder engine in 1900 was passing from the experimental, into the production stage, associated mainly with such French engineers as Forest, designer of experimental multi-cylinder engine (including a six-in-line) or marine applications; Mors, the famous manufacturer of racing cars who built the first practical V4; a Tenting, an ex-driver for Peugeot, who built a large inline four.

Without exception all these had automatic inlet valves, only the exhaust valves being positively actuated. Ignition was still usually achieved by burner, electrical systems being slow to be adopted. The magneto was brought alone at that time by the German, Robert Bosch, and Sims in England did much to ensure its adoption. At that time, also, the Frenchman, Claudel, invented the 'immersion carburettor', in which the jet was below the level of the petrol in the float chamber.

Thus the two great aids to really practical and dependable spark-ignition petrol engine were developed together and helped progress greatly. The engine was already mounted forward in nearly every case, hidden by the front-mounted radiator. Even then there was a division in the ranks of manufacturers into those who supported, respectively, air-cooling and water-cooling — a division that still exists today. The steering wheel had already been adopted almost universally.

So far as coachwork is concerned, 1900 was a year of transition from the attitude of the earlier manufacturers, who tried to make the motor car look like the horse-drawn carriage, to that of the innovators, who began to design it from a more rational point of view. Thus around half the vehicles built had wheels of equal diameter, and their number was growing. Pneumatic tyres had almost completely replaced the solid type, though rims were still very similar to those of carts, with thick wooden spokes. Many light cars, however, had lightly-spoked wheels. Manufacturers had varying ideas about coachwork even though the number of types seemed to be diminishing. Some produced only the chassis and its mechanical components, and this practice was to spread until mass production and the all-steel body took over in most important car plants.

Starting the engine was already in many cases by means of a starting bundle and this became virtually universal until the electric starting motor, with electric lighting, came along several years later.