7 The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time 7Gottlieb Daimler
(b. March 17, 1834, Schorndorf, Württemberg [now in Ger.]—d.
March 6, 1900, Cannstatt, near Stuttgart)
Mechanical engineer Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler became a
major fi gure in the early history of the automotive indus-
try. Gunsmithing was his fi rst vocation, and he showed
marked talent, but he abandoned the trade to go to engi-
neering school, studying in Germany, England, and
France. In Germany he worked for various engineering
and machining concerns, including the Karlsruhe
Maschinenbau gesellschaft, a fi rm that much earlier had
employed Benz.
In 1872 Daimler
became technical director
in the fi rm of Nikolaus A.
Otto, the man who had
invented the four-stroke
i n t e r n a l - c o m b u s t i o n
engine. Otto’s fi rm was
then building stationary
gasoline engines. During
the next decade, impor-
tant work was done on
the four-stroke engine.
Daimler brought in sev-
eral brilliant researchers,
among them Wilhelm
Maybach , but in 1882
both Daimler and
Maybach resigned
because of Daimler’s
conviction that Otto
did not understand the
Gottlieb Daimler. Encyclopædia
Britannica, Inc.