To replace flame ignition, Daimler and Maybach created the “hot tube,” which was made of porcelain, open at one end, and extended into the cylinder. The porcelain was heated from the outside so that its temperature would be sufficiently high to ignite the fuel-air mixture forced into it during the compression stroke. Eliminating the need to relight a gas flame after each explosion allowed for much faster revolutions—thus allowing a proportional decrease in engine size and weight—but hot-tube ignition had problems of its own. Most significant was that the porcelain needed to be a precise temperature. If the tube was not heated sufficiently, it would fail to ignite the mixture; too much and it would explode, taking the engine with it. Even under optimal circumstances, the porcelain experienced enormous fatigue from changes in temperature and would often crack, requiring frequent replacement.
Imperfect as it was, however, hot-tube ignition was a step forward and convinced Daimler and Maybach that their plan for a light, fast motor was sound. Daimler, according to his son, “therefore severed his connection with the Otto Engine Works at Deutz and, returning to Cannstadt, near Stuttgart, his early home, he devoted his entire time and attention to the design of a light petroleum motor and motor vehicle.”4 Paul Daimler failed to mention that his father’s parting with the man who had been his employer for a decade was bitter and acrimonious. Otto saw Daimler as an ingrate who had piggybacked off his ideas, and Daimler thought Otto a man hopelessly committed to outmoded technology.
With the money Daimler had made on his stock holdings in Otto Engine Works, he converted a greenhouse at the rear of his home to a machine shop. There he and Maybach worked in such secrecy that at one point police raided the greenhouse because neighbors were convinced the metallic sounds they heard coming from the building were the result of a counterfeiting operation.
But Daimler and Maybach weren’t copying anything. They were devoting their full, extraordinary energies to perfecting the components of their motor. One of the most significant would be Maybach’s design for an improved carburetor, the principles of which would dominate the industry for a century.*5 Before Maybach’s breakthrough, carburetion was achieved either with a brush—Marcus’s method—or, later, with a series of wicks that became saturated with fuel, much as a kerosene wick will become saturated in a lantern, and then were exposed to air drawn in from a surrounding chamber. With either of these designs, it was not possible to precisely regulate the amount of the fuel-air mixture that would enter the cylinder, and engines regularly either flooded or missed, sometimes within minutes of each other. Maybach ingeniously solved that problem by utilizing a float that sat atop the fuel reservoir. When the float reached the proper height, it activated a valve that stopped the flow of fuel to a separate chamber in which the fuel was exposed to air. The resulting fuel-air mixture, now in precise proportions, could then be drawn upward into the cylinder, compressed, and ignited.
In 1883, the lightweight, high-speed engine on which Daimler and Maybach had toiled for a decade was far enough along that they filed for a patent—which, for reasons never explained, was in Daimler’s name only. But if Maybach was aggrieved by an omission that could potentially cost him millions, he never expressed that sentiment publicly. Also for reasons never explained—although perhaps it was want of the more functional carburetor—it took an additional two years before they tested their motor on a prototype. The first vehicle to support the Daimler engine was, almost predictably, a bicycle.
It was a deftly constructed device, but stunningly uncomfortable, with the Daimler motor mounted directly beneath the driver’s seat, between his legs, fed by a fuel tank directly above it, fastened to the underside of the seat. Maybach had yet to fully perfect his float carburetor, so the fuel-air mixture was achieved with a brush that passed over the fuel reservoir. Power was transmitted from the engine to the rear wheel by an arrangement of belts and pulleys. Daimler and Maybach set the cylinder vertically, a construct that Daimler dubbed the “grandfather clock.” The engine was started with a crank, as would be all gasoline motors until the invention of the electric starter in 1896.*6 Two side wheels—positioned like training wheels on modern children’s bicycles—kept the device from falling over sideways. With neither suspension nor, with the exception of thin sections of the frame, any means of protecting the rider’s legs from the hot metal of the engine block, Daimler’s motor bicycle was hardly practical. Still, in November 1885, when Maybach successfully drove the machine two kilometers on the streets of Cannstadt, it was hailed as the first publicly demonstrated gasoline-powered vehicle in history. (German newspapermen seemed to have forgotten about Siegfried Marcus.)
Initially the pair had used benzene for fuel because it did not need to be vaporized for carburetion, but, as had Selden, they found the distillate slow-burning, smoky, and inefficient. They then tried gasoline, which they employed exclusively thereafter.
After the motor bicycle experiment, Daimler next tried mounting his motor on a boat, but he had difficulty persuading anyone to ride in the craft: they were certain the motor would explode. It did not, and soon afterward Daimler-powered boats appeared on lakes and rivers across Germany and into Switzerland. After that, while Karl Benz was perfecting his three-wheeler, they purchased a stagecoach, tried their engine on a trolley, and even used it to power a balloon. Finally, in 1889, Daimler and Maybach settled on the automobile as the most promising application for their invention.
But Daimler and Maybach’s greatest contribution was the motor itself. In 1887, well before they decided to mount their motor on an automobile, licenses were sold to other builders who intended to do that very thing.
* * *
*1 For forty years, Austrian schoolchildren were regularly taught that Siegfried Marcus had built the first automobile. But Marcus was a Jew, and when the Nazis came to power, they destroyed his records and obliterated every mention of him that they could find. Thus, most of the details of Marcus’s work have been lost. The second prototype, however, had been consigned to Vienna’s Technical Museum and some quick-thinking employees hid it in a storeroom before it could be noticed by the Germans. That motorcar, now the property of the Austrian Automobile Club, is virtually all that remains of the man who could legitimately lay claim to the invention of the automobile.
*2 In 2008, the German government declared a stretch of road from Frankfurt to Baden-Baden the Berthe Benz Memorial Route. There is now a biennial antique car rally along the route to celebrate Berthe’s journey.
*3 At fourteen years old, while apprenticed to a gunsmith, he is reported to have designed and built a double-barreled pistol. Other accounts have Daimler building the pistol at ten, others not until he was eighteen—more credible, certainly, but less appealing.
*4 He did, however, eventually make time to get married and sire two sons, the eldest of whom, Paul, he doted on and took everywhere, while his wife and other son, Adolf, generally remained at home.
*5 In his article, Paul Daimler referred to this device as the “Daimler Carburettor,” although Maybach, still very much alive, was certain to read it.
*6 Electric starters would not come into widespread use for another two decades.
CHAPTER 4
The Germans provided the impetus for motorized travel, but it fell to the French to create the modern automobile. In the 1880s and 1890s, a series of innovators attacked the problem from a variety of angles and in the process became both the most advanced and the most successful carmakers in the world.
The most important of these men was Émile Levassor, who joined with René Panhard, a fellow graduate of the École Centrale Paris, France’s premier college of engineering, initially to build machine tools for woodworking. In the early 1880s, they purchased a license from Otto and Langen to build motors that could be used for power saws. But both followed closely the news out of Germany and, after learning of Benz’s machine, became interested in building an automobile that could be sold in France. It soon became clear, however, that the gas-powered
Otto would be difficult, if not impossible, to adapt for that purpose. One afternoon in 1887, while sailing on a lake, Levassor noticed a boat powered by a Daimler motor. After some inquiries, he contacted Édouard Sazarin, Daimler’s French agent, to discuss the purchase of a license to build the light, high-speed motors in France.*1 When Sazarin told Daimler of the potential deal, Daimler journeyed to France to meet Levassor and was impressed by both his abilities and his vision, and they quickly came to terms. But Levassor and Panhard did not immediately begin to design automobiles. Their first idea was to produce only the engines and engage another manufacturer to construct the remainder of the car. They chose Armand Peugeot, another École Centrale graduate, whose family had been metalworkers for four generations. Peugeot, who had been manufacturing—what else?—bicycles, had also seen the potential of automobiles. He had completed an experimental steam carriage just months before Levassor approached him. Peugeot enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to use a Daimler motor instead, and in 1890 and 1891 he built several automobiles for Panhard and Levassor, based, as had become the norm, on the “horseless carriage” schematic.
But Levassor thought merely throwing a motor on a horse-drawn carriage—or a glorified bicycle—was shortsighted, and he decided he could create a better machine. Within months, he had produced a radically new design. The 1891 Panhard et Levassor was a true automobile, the first that did not simply mirror a horse-drawn carriage’s silhouette. Levassor placed “the engine in front, a sliding change-speed gear arranged for various speeds, a counter-shaft for carrying a differential gear, and sprockets for a chain drive on to the back wheels.”1
Levassor’s design allowed for larger, more powerful engines whose size was not limited by the space under the seat or between the rear wheels. With a clutch that linked the engine to a variable-speed transmission, power went through a differential to chains that drove the rear wheels. Levassor observed of his creation, “C’est brutal, mais ça marche” (It is raw, but it works). Peugeot soon adopted the design, as within a few years did every other French carmaker. Eventually each of those features was incorporated in automobiles around the world, and a front-mounted engine with clutch-driven gearbox and rear differential has remained the industry standard to this day.
1898 Panhard et Levassor
These improvements, while groundbreaking, in no way meant that a ride in a French automobile was a peaceful, pleasant experience. To give a sense of what early automobiling was like, Charles Jarrott described a friend starting the engine of Émile Levassor’s #5 in late 1896:
Wellington, who was an expert on ignition burners (so he informed me), then proceeded to light the ignition lamps for the motor. His methods were drastic, novel to me, and terrifying to the bystanders. There was rather a big blaze, but, as he explained to me afterwards, that was a detail, and it really was not dangerous. Anyhow, when I say that he turned on the petrol tap, flooded the whole of the engine with petrol, turned the tap off, lit a match, dropped it inside the bonnet of the motor and then ran away, one can imagine that my criticism of his expertness was somewhat more forcible than the expression of the word “primitive.” And having assured the bystanders that the aid of the fire brigade was not necessary, and the flames having subsided, we got the burners to work with the aid of some methylated spirit, and then proceeded to start the motor.2
Still, the virtues of Levassor’s creation were manifest in speed, endurance, and handling, and Panhard et Levassor and Peugeot quickly dominated the market. Paris boulevardiers, industrialists, and country doctors, the core groups of French car buyers, submitted so many orders for the machines that the two firms could not fill them all. Many carmakers abandoned steam, and by July 1895, during an exhibition on the Champ de Mars—only six years after Karl Benz had introduced his Motorwagen—thirty-six carmakers exhibited automobiles.
The French also solved the problem of what an automobile should run on. Wheels were originally made of iron, but soon this was supplanted by solid rubber. While less prone to distortions from striking rocks, ruts, or holes, solid rubber’s ability to absorb jolts was only a marginal improvement over metal. A car rattling about did not merely create discomfort for the passengers; it could literally destroy a chassis or disable an engine. In 1890, two brothers who ran a family rubber business, Édouard and André Michelin, noticed that a bicycle tire invented by Scottish veterinarian John Boyd Dunlop was “pneumatic”—filled with air—which gave it remarkable resiliency. In Dunlop’s version, the rubber shell was glued to the wheel; this made it unwieldy and time-consuming to repair on a bicycle, almost impossible on a motorcar. The Michelins improved on Dunlop’s invention by creating a locking lip on the rubber, which was set into a matching shape on the wheel. The tires were thus easy to detach and repair when the tire was deflated. Pneumatic tires were also a good deal lighter than solid rubber, and, by absorbing vibration, they allowed a machine’s frame to be lighter as well. They first marketed their “pneus” for bicycles with great success, and in 1895 they mounted the first set for automobiles on a Peugeot. In extremely short order, pneumatic tires became standard for every automobile made in Europe or the United States.
The Michelins also became famous for benevolent treatment of their workers. They created a system of bonuses based on the company’s profits and also a medical plan, in which physicians hired by the company treated Michelin workers and prescribed medications, all at a fraction of the normal cost. Eventually the company built a hospital and a senior citizens’ facility, subsidized housing, and financed a cooperative at which Michelin workers could buy food, clothing, and other necessities.
Temperamentally opposite from the Michelins, certainly in how he viewed the working class, was Count Albert de Dion, a playboy aristocrat whose father had married an American. De Dion had become interested in automobiles between sessions at the gaming tables or engaging in duels. Like Peugeot, he began with steam.
In 1883, he engaged a mechanic, Georges Bouton, and began manufacturing steam carriages, uncharacteristically granting the commoner Bouton equal billing in the partnership. In the late 1880s, steam became a far more practical alternative when yet another Frenchman, Leon Serpollet, aided by his brother Henri, perfected the “flash tube boiler.” Also called the “mono-tube boiler,” Serpollet’s invention used far less water and converted it into steam much more quickly, all while providing a continual supply to the engine. That, in turn, considerably shortened the time it took to get the motor to sufficient pressure to engage the pistons, making for faster starts and the ability to run at higher speeds. Serpollet eventually built a racing car with a four-cylinder motor, which, for a time, held the land speed record.
Serpollet’s design was adopted by almost everyone who wished to remain with steam power. De Dion therefore continued to build steam-powered cars—and would for a decade—but after the success of the Daimler motor, he and Bouton agreed that the future was with gasoline. Levassor had the exclusive French license, so Bouton designed an extremely light, 3-horsepower motor of his own that was capable of running at high speed and had electric ignition rather than flame. He initially mounted the motor on a tricycle, as had Karl Benz. Bouton proved himself a first-rate engineer, and De Dion–Bouton motors gained a well-deserved reputation for performance, reliability, and durability, all at a reasonable price. Although they were unable to match the popularity of Panhard et Levassor, sales of the De Dions remained brisk throughout the first half of the 1890s.
Eventually, word of De Dion–Bouton motors made its way across the Atlantic and would-be automakers in the United States began to purchase them as well.*2 All this interest stoked de Dion’s elitist sensibilities, and in 1896, before he had built a single four-wheeled gasoline automobile of his own, Count de Dion and a group of wealthy industrialists and car enthusiasts founded the Automobile Club de France (ACF) to promote both racing and French automobiles. Its headquarters were in an opulent four-story mansion on Place de la Concorde, purchased for 1.5 million francs, com
plete with balconies and roof garden.3
With the founding of the auto club, “automobilism,” as it was called, took on an extra dimension. Count de Dion’s palatial clubhouse became a meeting place of young right-wing aristocrats, and soon the automobile began to be seen by large segments of the public not as an agent of progress but rather as one of reaction. In response, municipalities with left-wing constituencies often enacted anti-automobile laws, such as speed limits of 6 miles per hour. De Dion himself was a member of the Chamber of Deputies, where he spoke out vociferously against Alfred Dreyfus. After a protest demonstration at the Auteuil racecourse in 1899 at which either President Émile Loubet or a police inspector was struck over the head with a cane—accounts differ—De Dion, an admitted ringleader, was accused of the act, forcibly restrained by the police, and subsequently jailed for two weeks.*3
In 1899, de Dion and Bouton moved beyond motors and finally began making gasoline cars on their own, and these soon acquired a reputation as some of the finest machines produced anywhere. But one year before they did, a twenty-one-year-old engineering whiz named Louis Renault took an old De Dion–Bouton motor and mounted it on a car with a three-speed gearbox, with reverse and what at the time was called “propeller drive,” a system for transmitting power directly to the rear axle without chains. Renault’s system also featured a more efficient method of shifting gears from one speed to another.*4
1901 De Dion motor carriage
Renault, from a wealthy family of haberdashers, had built the car on a whim, for personal use and not to sell. But to celebrate Christmas in 1898, he drove his new machine, which he called a voiturette, from his family’s country estate to Montmartre, in Paris, to join his brother Marcel and some friends. At Christmas dinner, someone bet that his machine could not negotiate the 13 percent grade up the hill to the restaurant. Renault drove up and back a number of times with a passenger seated next to him. Before he had finished dinner, Renault had orders for twelve voiturettes. He, Marcel, and a third brother, Fernand, founded Renault Frères a few weeks afterward. By March, they had rented factory space near their family home and begun to manufacture the Voiturette Type A. With motorcars that were light, sturdy, reliable, and easy to maintain—traits that would later be attributed to Ford’s Model T—Renault Frères, although never quite outstripping Panhard, quickly became one of the leading automobile manufacturers in France.
Drive!: Henry Ford, George Selden, and the Race to Invent the Auto Age Page 5