Engines That Move Markets (2nd Ed)

by Alasdair Nairn

  Although the 19th century was dominated by the growth and impact of the railways, it did not revolutionise every aspect of transportation. In America short journeys continued to be the province of horse-powered vehicles – carriages, single horses, or vehicles mounted on rails and pulled by horses. The huge volume of capital devoted to developing the railroads left little over for roads, so a dual system developed – railroads for long distances or heavy goods, and horses for shorter journeys. In Europe, where distances between urban populations and markets were not so great, railways and roads had developed alongside each other thoughout the 19th century to accommodate increased traffic.

  The steam engine was the technology that powered the railways, but it stubbornly failed to provide what many hoped it would – namely a means of locomotion for a freestanding vehicle, one that was not bound by the constraints of rail tracks. Steam power was just one of the many alternatives explored in the search for the self-powered vehicle, or ‘horseless carriage’. Vehicles were constructed that utilised fuels such as gas, turpentine and alcohol. With gas, the principal issue was the volume required to allow any vehicle to travel a meaningful distance. Early signs were encouraging; with the development of coal gas, a fuel looked to be available which would provide an alternative to steam. The volume-versus-power problem had not, though, been resolved. For this reason the early success of a gas-powered engine, designed and patented in France by the Belgian, Jean-Joseph Lenoir, in 1860, proved illusory – despite press plaudits at the time. Alcohol and turpentine engines also failed to gain ground, for the reason that the fuels had restricted availability and hence were prohibitively expensive.

  The petrol-powered internal combustion engine would emerge as the winner in the race to develop a self-powered vehicle, but the contest was a long, drawn-out affair. In the early stages, the eventual outcome was far from clear – with gas, steam and electric cars all vying for development funds and market share. Jean-Joseph Lenoir’s engine, though unsuccessful, was important as it attracted a great deal of attention, including a visit by an aspiring engineer called Gottlieb Daimler from Wurtemburg in southern Germany.

  Europe’s first pioneers

  Daimler came from a family of bakers but had moved into a career in engineering, serving his apprenticeship at a carbine manufacturer before moving to a firm near Strasbourg to study mechanics and construct railway cars and bridges. Daimler was not convinced by Lenoir’s machine and moved to England where he studied the advances of the Industrial Revolution. He returned to Wurtemburg in 1863, where he took over the running of an engineering complex near Stuttgart. The complex was more of a charitable organisation than a profit-making concern, and by 1870 Daimler’s frustrations made him ready to seek alternatives. His background assisted him in his efforts – he was by now both technically skilled and an experienced operational manager, a relatively rare combination for the time. Initially Daimler joined Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft Karlsruhe as managing director, a company that coincidently had previously employed a gentleman named Carl Benz in its drafting office. Daimler was placed in charge of all its operations, extending from bridge works to engine and locomotive construction.

  During the Paris Exhibition of 1867, the Lenoir exhibit had been overshadowed by the new atmospheric engine of ‘Otto und Langen’. Daimler had been impressed, as had the judges of the exhibition who had awarded the engine and its two German inventors the gold medal. Buoyed by the positive publicity this had provided for Nicolaus Otto and Eugen Langen, their new company – the Gasmotoren-Fabrik Deutz – had received over 500 orders with a further 2,000 potential orders pending. To build on what would today be described as a ‘concept car’, Langen and Otto needed an individual capable of establishing and managing a commercial production process.

  Daimler filled this gap, taking with him a colleague by the name of Wilhelm Maybach. Together they moved production and product quality on to a commercial footing using the techniques that Daimler had learned from his experience of precision engineering in England and his knowledge of process management. The two-stroke engine displayed at the Paris Exhibition was soon displaced by a new four-stroke engine developed by Otto’s company. Daimler felt the patent should have his name attached but lost the argument with Langen. Eventually the friction between Otto and Daimler was to reach a point where Langen was forced to bow to Otto’s wishes and remove Daimler from the company. Daimler felt that the fact that the machine used gas as its fuel greatly limited its application. He was intrigued by the possibility of using the substance that Edwin Drake had found in Pennsylvania, but found progress in this direction inhibited by Otto’s opposition. As a consequence, after ten years helping to build the Deutz Company, Daimler was faced with starting again if he was to pursue this possibility.

  Daimler was not alone in perceiving the potential for the use of rock-oil distillates. Carl Benz had followed a similar route. Benz had also been born in southern Germany, but the death of his father from pneumonia while an engineer on the railroads had forced his mother to take in boarders to pay for Benz’s education and his fixation with engineering. Like Daimler, Benz had gained practical experience of locomotive engines and the engineering of bridge building. Also like Daimler, Benz was strong-willed and as a consequence had fallen out with his business partners. In Benz’s case, the board of the company he had helped to create refused to consider constructing a road vehicle using the engine he had created. Indeed, the board was sufficiently disturbed by Benz’s protestations that they actually questioned his sanity, and as a consequence probably welcomed his resignation.⁵⁰

  In 1883, Benz set up Benz and Cie., Rheinische Gasmotorenfabrik. The company was to specialise in the design and production of gas engines, and when finances permitted, would branch into research on self-powered vehicles. Benz’s stationary two-stroke engine sold well, providing sufficient income for his company to accommodate his interest in transportation. In this regard, he followed a similar path to Daimler by attempting to design an improved four-stroke engine. Also, like Daimler, he had speculated about the potential use of a waste product that came from the oilfields of Pennsylvania and Baku.

  The oil from these fields had been distilled or refined for two principal products. The first and most important was kerosene. The second was heavy oil, which was used as an engineering lubricant. This left a light part of the refined oil that was highly flammable and hence dangerous. The effective disposal of this waste had not been an easy task for the industry, but engineers such as Daimler and Benz pondered whether it might be the fuel that could satisfy their requirements for an internal combustion engine. The waste had a number of names; in Germany it was benzin, in France, essence de petrole, and in the English language petrol or gasoline.

  The problem for Daimler at the time was that the patent on the four-stroke engine belonged to Otto. This would inevitably inhibit his ability to commercialise the advances in four-stroke engines that he and Maybach had achieved. This was a common problem for all developers of four-stroke engines, including Benz’s, but one which was to be summarily resolved in late January 1886 when the courts declared Otto’s patent void, on the basis that it had actually been invented in France before the patent application, with a running model having been manufactured in 1873. As a consequence, other developers were now free to make use of the four-stroke technology.

  Daimler had continued to work on his engine while the litigation progressed, and was thus well placed to make use of his work when the verdict came through. Under the non-compete conditions of his contract with Deutz, Daimler had offered his previous employers his engine patents, an offer Deutz was later to regret spurning. Similarly Benz had worked on his vehicle as a personal sideline during the period. Both Daimler and Benz had sought to keep their work quiet – not so much for reasons of commercial secrecy, but more to do with the dangers of the volatile fuel they were experimenting with, dangers of which the public were only too well aware. Daimler had ordered a traditional horse-drawn carriage
(under the guise of a present for his daughter) and used this as the chassis for his engine. Benz, too, had experimented with a self-built car in the privacy of his own grounds.

  In 1886 both Benz and Daimler had independently produced the first automobiles powered by gasoline. The initial public reaction was an almost total lack of interest. The profits of both men stemmed from the sales of their original stationary engines. Public perception only changed with the 1888 Berlin Engineering Exposition, where Benz won a gold medal for his exhibit. The press now became enamoured with his vehicle and crowds breathlessly followed his demonstrations. Unfortunately sales did not follow. Benz later reminisced that his only prospective customer was removed to a lunatic asylum before the sale could be completed.⁵¹ Benz did manage to raise his sales tally to one when Emile Roger, his company’s French representative, purchased a vehicle.

  Daimler did not meet with greater success than Benz. Like Benz, he had cultivated links with French distributors for his engines, and in addition had established a relationship with a Long Island manufacturer of pianos, William Steinway, for American distribution of his products. Steinway, or Steinweg as the family name was prior to emigrating from Germany, was to help in developing the Daimler business in America. However, like virtually all commercial customers, partners or financiers of the time, Steinway’s view as to the viability or prospects for a self-powered vehicle was one of scepticism. The success of the engines themselves, though, was such that the Daimler Motor Company was established in New York in 1889. Daimler had not limited the uses of his engine to vehicles. More public uses included engines for boats and powering balloons, the latter an experiment that fired the interest of Ferdinand von Zeppelin.

  Interest in the motor vehicle in Germany did not grow greatly. It was in Paris where the real growth was stimulated. The Paris Exposition of 1889, to commemorate the centennial of the French Revolution, attracted more than 25 million visitors with its central attraction, a metal tower in the Champ de Mars designed by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel. At the exhibition, both Daimler and Benz had vehicles on display, and while Daimler drew professional credit for his innovation and improvements to his engines, the public showed little interest in his vehicle. Likewise, the steam-powered vehicle of the long-established steel product company, Peugeot, was not considered memorable by any – including Armand Peugeot himself. He was much more interested in the engine produced by Daimler, to the extent that shortly after the exhibition he secured a supply of the Daimler engine. Peugeot was convinced of the future potential of the vehicle and needed an engine to begin his own construction and research programme. Despite – or perhaps because of – the success of his engines, Daimler needed to raise further capital. In 1890 he formed the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft mbH with a capital of 600,000 marks (approximately $11m). In doing so his interest in the company was diluted to one third and he therefore lost control.

  It did not take long for the interests of Daimler and the other shareholders to diverge. Daimler wished to develop the vehicle use of his engine, while the other shareholders wished to remain focused on the development and production of the profitable and accepted stationary engines. Daimler was further agitated by the news that Peugeot was developing a vehicle with a Daimler engine and that Benz was somehow, through his agent Emile Roger, managing to sell vehicles in France. By 1893 Benz had improved on his original three-wheel model and introduced a four-wheel vehicle called the Victoria. Benz built 45 Victorias, most of which were sold in France.

  In Britain, powered vehicles had been greeted by the introduction of the ‘red flag’ legislation that required vehicles to be preceded by a man walking with a red flag. In Germany the reaction to powered transport was marginally less restrictive. In November 1893 the Ministry of the Interior for the State of Baden sent Benz a proclamation regarding the operation of his vehicles on public roads. It effectively stated that a speed limit of 12 km per hour would apply in rural areas and 6 km per hour in urban areas or around tight bends. It also stated that permission to drive was not only probationary but that further restrictions could be applied at any time. Not exactly a welcome mat for the few potential purchasers in Baden.

  The legislative decree forced Benz into the construction of an elaborate hoax to have the new restrictions relaxed or removed. The plan took the form of a payment to the local milkman as an inducement to act out a charade during the visit to Baden by the man responsible for the new restrictions, the minister of the interior. Benz invited the minister into his vehicle for a demonstration, the minister accepted and Benz sent a vehicle to the railroad to collect him on arrival. With the minister safely in the vehicle it then proceeded at the legal restricted place to meet with Benz, whereupon a carefully prepared incident took place. As the vehicle crawled along the road it was overtaken by the milkman in his milk cart, who directed some carefully chosen derogatory comments at the occupants. Not surprisingly a minister of the state was not amused by such a commentary and directed the driver to quickly overtake the offending cart. The driver initially refused, citing the regulations set out by the minister himself. In a fury the minister recanted and the new regulations were quickly put to one side so that the vehicle could pass the milk cart and allow verbal retribution to be exacted. It was perhaps the shortest lasting speed limit in history.

  6.1 – First car, first speed limit

  Source: B. R. Kimes, The Star and the Laurel: The Centennial History of Daimler, Mercedes, and Benz, 1886–1986, Mercedes Benz of North America, 1986, p.56.

  The race to attract attention

  If the gasoline-powered vehicle had established a very small beachhead in Europe, its presence in America was still largely non-existent. Daimler had made some headway in America in his venture with William Steinway. Daimler engines had sold well and his Daimler boats – retailing at anywhere between $815 ($60,000) to $7,000 ($0.5m) for a 50-foot launch – had found ready customers. However, the two motor vehicles that had been shipped and offered for sale remained unsold. Daimler fared little better at the World’s Columbian Exposition, held to commemorate the finding of America, in Chicago in 1893. Like the Paris Exposition that preceded it, Chicago decided a massive engineering centrepiece was in order. To this end, it commissioned an Illinois engineer named George Ferris to build an enormous wheel that would carry visitors high into the air, giving a spectacular view of the exposition area. Daimler displayed his vehicle at the exposition and it is recorded that one extremely interested visitor to his stand was an employee of the Detroit Edison Illuminating Company by the name of Henry Ford. Even the exposition, though, did not garner sufficient interest and it was only the reporting of the growth in sales of gasoline-powered vehicles in France that began to excite interest in America.

  The interest was further stimulated by a series of road trials and races that were suggested and sponsored by newspapers to help increase circulation. The first trial took place between Paris and Rouen in July 1893, and featured vehicles powered by both steam and gasoline engines. For the record, the prize was won by two cars powered by Daimler engines, one of which had been built and entered by Peugeot. The excitement stimulated by this event was extensively reported in America and on Thanksgiving Day 1895, the Chicago Times-Herald inaugurated America’s first automobile race with $5,000 ($350,000) in prizes. The newspaper also commissioned a competition to name the new vehicles. The winning term of the competition was ‘motorcycle’, but its popularity was limited and eventually the term used in France – the ‘automobile’ – was adopted.

  With rallies now having taken place in America and France, Britain decided to follow suit. With the support of the company that had obtained the Daimler rights for the UK, a rally coined the ‘Emancipation Run’ was organised in 1896 between London and Brighton in an effort to get the restrictive red flag laws repealed. These laws had been enacted partly because of concern about safety, but primarily at the behest of the parties whose transport businesses were threatened by the emergence of the automobile. T
he law in Britain before 1896 specified that at least three men should drive the vehicle, that it should travel no faster than three miles per hour, and that it should also be preceded by a man carrying a red flag. When the laws were repealed in 1896, this allowed the industry to accelerate its efforts; a large number of companies began producing vehicles.

  The popularity of the automobile was spreading and gaining influential friends. While global sales remained low in absolute terms, it was clear that the era of the automobile was on its way. As the press of the time shows, the key was the sequence of races. The great expositions and industrial shows undoubtedly helped as professional showcases for development in the nascent industry, but the general reporting of such shows was negligible by comparison to the column inches devoted to the races.

  6.2 – Early motor races: more endurance tests than Grands Prix