Wilhelm Maybach
Wilhelm Maybach (February 9 1846; December 29 1929) was a German car-engine and automobile designer and an industrialist. Was born in Heilbronn, Germany, and died in Stuttgart.
Since the late 19th century, Wilhelm Maybach and Gottlieb Daimler workaholic union developed light, high-speed internal combustion engines, suitable in any kind of vehicle (land, water and air). Including world's first: motorcycle, four-wheeled car, motorboat and "modernly outlined car" (the Mercedes).
Maybach was significant in the early automobile production history. By the 1890s, named "King of constructors" in France (first World powerhouse in the matter).
Was technical director of the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG, Daimler Motors Company), albeit never get along with its chairmen. In 1909 Maybach left the DMG, founding the company Maybach-Motorenbau GmbH together with his son Karl to manufacture engines for Zeppelins. After the Versailles Treaty the company produced large luxury vehicles.
The last civilian vehicles produced by his company were 1940 models; the company was discontinued after World War II. However, Daimler-Benz retained rights to the trademark, revived as a super-luxury make in 2002.
Early life and career beginnings (1846 to 1869)
Wilhem Maybach was son of a carpenter and his wife Luise from the town of Heilbronn, with 5 sisters. By his 8 years old, the family moved from Loewenstein (Wuerttemberg) (nearby Heilbronn) to Stuttgart. Where in just 3 years (1956-1959) his two parents died: first his mother and two years later his father.
After his relatives published an announcement in a newspaper (Stuttgarter Anzeiger), the Bruderhaus ("Siblings' home") philanthropic institution at Reutlingen welcomed Maybach as student. Its own founder/director, Gustav Werner, discovered his technical inclinations and dedicated personally to stimulate his career, destining Maybach to the school's engineering workshop. At 15 (1861) Maybach was already on-track of the industrial graphic design, adding afternoon extra classes of physics and mathematics at Reutlingen's public high-school. With 19 years old Maybach was a qualified designer working on static engines, awaking the attention of the new workshop manager in the Bruderhaus: Gottlieb Daimler, workaholic 29-years-old industrial designer. Who adopted Maybach as his only assistant for the rest of his life (until the year 1900).
Daimler and Otto's Four-Stroke engine (1869 to 1880)
In 1869 Maybach (23 years old) as technical designer followed Daimler, who was moving to a company of mechanical-engineering, manufacturing heavy-duty locomotives : the Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft Karlsruhe AG in Karlsruhe. Daimler was in the Executive Commitee. But additionally, both sidekicks spent long nights discussing new designs of engines for pumps, lumber industries and punching metal panels.
One day Gottlieb Daimler received a convocation seeking for a new technical director charge at Deutz-AG-Gasmotorenfabrik gas-engines factory, in Cologne. World largest manufacturer of stationary gas engines by these years, half-owned by the inventor Nikolaus August Otto). Daimler responded affirmatively in 1872, becoming director together with Otto and both focusing on the gas-engine work-arounds. Obviously, Maybach also was there as chief designer.
In 1876 Nikolaus Otto invented the Four-Stroke-Compression system, also known as the Otto-Stroke, a gas internal combustion engine characterized by pistons (combined with cylinder´s valves) moving alternately in phases of: intake, compression, power and exhaust. But unable to compete against the predominant steam-engines of that era because was still too primitive, inefficient for practical use.
This year Maybach was commended to present the Deutz's engines at Philadelphia's World Fair(USA). Back in Cologne (1877, 31 years) Maybach concentrated in the Four-Stroke designs, for its impending massive commercial launch.
In 1878 Maybach married Bertha Wilhelmine Habermaas. From a rich family friend of Daimler's wife (Emma Kunz) one. The Habermaas were landowners of Maulbronner and had a post-office. The next year was born Karl (July 6 1879), his first son of three.
But Gottlieb Daimler and Nikolaus Otto had serious discussions. Culminating in Daimler's firing from the Deutz-AG in 1880. Receiving Daimler 112.000 Gold-marks in Deutz-AG shares compensating all the patents of applied inventions (by him and Maybach). Followed by Maybach's renounce, behind his friend to a new enterprise at Cannstatt.
Daimler Motors: Fast and small engines (1882)
In 1882 Maybach (36 years) moved to Southern Germany in Taubenheimstrasse at Cannstatt (on the route 13, distinguished Stuttgart suburb), were Daimler purchased a cottage with 75,000 gold-marks. In the garden they added a brick-extension to the roomy glass-fronted summerhouse darkened with curtains. Becoming their 24-hours workshop.
But eventually, their hermetic discretion altered the neighbors. The police secretly obtained a key-copy and, in absence of Daimler and Maybach, raided the property surmising false coining. Finding obviously only engines. So the noisy engineering activities could continue.
Daimler and Maybach founded the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft for the construction of internal combustion engines. With Maybach as "Chief Designer", the partnership focused on the creation of small and fast engines of constant combustion to be applied universally in land, water and air transportation. As the modern Mercedes Benz logo: a three pointed star each one representing a different way.
Spending long hours debating how to power Otto's Four-Stroke engine, which didn't allow higher speeds using gas as fuel, discovered the use as fuel of the petroleum (until then only used as cleaner sold by pharmacies).
In 1884 was born Maybach's second son, Adolf.
The Grandfather´s Clock (1885)
At the end of 1883 Maybach and Daimler developed the first of their engines. Of reduced size, single-horizontal Four Stroke cylinder. Air cooled, with a large Iron-Cast flywheel, a revolutionary hot tube ignition (patented 28022) and with an exhaust valve regulated by curved groove control (allowing high speeds). Its 600 rpm overcame all the standards until then (120 to 180 rpm). Regarded as the prototype of all modern petrol engines.
In 1885 they also created the first carburetor, that injected evaporated gasoline and mixed it with air (allowing its use as fuel). Used that year on a bigger version of the engine (albeit still relatively compact), now with a vertical cylinder. Patented (DRP-28-022): "uncooled, heat-insulated engine with unregulated hot-tube ignition". It had specifications of 100 cc with 1 hp at 600 rpm, something unexpected by those years. Daimler baptized his creation the Grandfather´s Clock (Standuhr) because for him it resembled an old pendulum clock.
In November 1885 Daimler installed a smaller version in a wooden bicycle creating the first motorcycle with the patent 36-423: "Vehicle with gas or petroleum drive machine", called the "riding car". Maybach drove it 3 kilometers from Cannstatt to Untertuerkheim, reaching 7.5 mph (12 km/h).
In March 8, 1886, the duet of inventors took secretly a stagecoach (built by Wilhelm Wimpff & Sohn) toward the house, telling the neighbors that was a birthday gift for Mrs. Daimler. But in fact Maybach supervised the installation into it of an enlarged Grandfather's Clock. Becoming the first four-wheeled automobile (then called "Reitwagen" ). Reaching 10 mph (16 km/h) with 1.5 hp (power transmitted by a set of belts). Tested again on the way to Untertuerkheim.
Enthusiastically, Maybach and Daimler proved the engine in many ways since then. First on water (1887) mounting it on a boat 4.5 meters long which achieved 6 knots (11 km/h). Named Neckar because its testing was carried out on that river (patent DRP 39-367). As the first buyers expressed fear that its petrol engine could explode spontaneously, Daimler hid it inside a porcelain shell and lied that it was "Oil-Electrical". Eventually becoming their foremost product.
The Grandfathter's Clock was also tested several times on land, in street-car demonstrations and in a trolley. Even by the skies with the first motorized airship: a gasballon. Basing on designs by Dr. Friedrich Hermann Woelfert (from Leipzig) who had created a hand-operated drive system that never worked before. But Daimler and Maybach commuted it to their engine, successfully flying over Seelberg in 1888 (August 10).
By 1887 they sold their first patents abroad. Their commercial ambitions took Maybach as representative to the great Paris' World Design Exhibition (1886 to 1889), showing all these achievements.
Second Daimler-Maybach automobile (1889)
| high speed four stroke petrol engine | |
|---|---|
| fuel vaporization | |
| 2 cylinders V-configured | |
| mushroom shaped valves | |
| water-cooled | |
| 4 speed toothed gearbox | |
| pioneer axle-pivot steering system | |
The sales increased (mostly from the Neckar motorboat), so in 1887 (June) Daimler bought (30200 gold marks) another land (2903 square meters) in the Seelberg hill (Cannstatt) --at Ludwig Route 67, some miles away because the Cannstatt's Mayor was bothered by Daimler's workshop--. Building new workshops for 23 employees. With Daimler managing the commercial issues and Maybach in the design department.
In 1889 Daimler and Maybach built their first automobile designed in its entirely, not readapting any previous platform and influenced by bicycle´s outline. Its license was mass-marketed in France. Presented publicly in Paris by both inventors (October 1889).
By those years Daimler's licenses sowed the world, becoming the origin of the modern car industry: France (1890 Panhard & Levassor and Peugeot), United Kingdom (1896, Daimler Coventry) and USA (1891, Steinway).
DMG's "devil pact" and The Phoenix engine (1890 to 1900)
Daimler and Maybach couldn't sell enough units to keep the enterprise and, until then, their patents proceeds weren't enough. Then, ensured the influx of new capitals with the arrival of the financiers Max von Duttenhofer and William Lorenz, who were associated with the influential banker Kilian Steiner (owner of a German Investment Bank converting companies into corporations). Founding the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG, meaning "Daimler Motor Company") in November 28, 1890. Regarded as a "devil pact" by some German historians[1], because the following chaotic decade.
Because while Daimler Motors was expanded by the new capitalists, they also took complete control of it in a way like --for example-- ordering the creation of additional static engines departments, arguing that to invest in automobile production would not be profitable. Even they had planed to merge the DMG with the Deutz-AG.
Against all this, Daimler and Maybach preferred to produce automobiles and reacted against Duttenhofer and Lorenz. Short time later when Maybach (chief engineer) was denied in the Board of Management he abandoned formally the company (February 11, 1891) to continue his design work around Cannstatt: first from his own house (supported by Daimler) and later (autumn 1892) from the former Hermann Hotel. At both its dance hall and winter garden with 12 workers and 5 apprentices, again on Daimler's behalf.
Cloistered in there, Maybach (together with Daimler and his son Paul) designed (and the DMG produced) their third engine model: the Phoenix (1894). It awoke worldwide attention pioneering four cylinders one-block-cast, vertical and parallel. Featuring a camshaft aiding the exhaust valves, a spray-nozzle carburetor (patented in 1893) and some belt drive system improvements. Some of this cars arrived first in the first race of history: Paris to Rouen 1894.
Maybach's creations are considered the best of the second half of the 1800s, developing devices that any other manufacturer in the World had to include in their units. Becoming the technological backbone of the primitive automobile industry in France, where was hailed as the "King of Constructors".
As discussions with Lorenz increased, Daimler had been forced out of his charge as Technical Director, resigning too in 1893. The vagueness decried DMG 's technical prestige. Until 1894 when the British industrial Fredrick Simms conditioned his purchase (350,000 marks, which also stabilized the finances) of DMG 's Phoenix rights to Daimler's reinstating. Returning first as shareholder and later wholly in the board of management. In 1895 when DMG assembled its 1000th engine, Maybach also returned as Chief of Engineers, getting 30,000 Gold-marks in shares through his old original contract with Daimler. Both of them left then the Hermann hotel.
Maybach continued patenting automobile marvels. Creating a revolutionary cooling system. First a tubular radiator with fan followed by a honeycomb radiator. In 1897 built the Viktoria with its engine mounted on the front axle. In 1898/99, a 4-cylinder engine in five models achieving 6 to 23 hp.
But by these years Maybach suffered double afflictions. In 1900 Daimler died by heart disease. While his teen-aged second son, Adolf, suffered a Schizophrenia attack and was cloistered for life in diverse institutions --until 1940 when was murdered because the Euthanasia Program by the nazis.
The Mercedes (1900)
In 1900, among April and October, Maybach designed a whole new kind of car inspired on the races: the Mercedes. Considered the "first true car" in history because marked the end of the carriage-age. Built up with lightweight metals featuring a larger wheelbase, lower height and unheard speed in the World: 40 mph (64,4 km/h) with 35 hp. Featuring 4-V-cylinder engine with 2 carburetors (inlet valves throttled by driver), 4-forward/1-reverse transmission and Honeycomb radiator.
Baptized Mercedes (in Spanish means grace) after Mercedes Jellinek, daughter of Emil Jellinek (Austrian successful dealer in Southern France and race driver), one of his closest assistants. Jellinek pledged beforehand the purchase of a huge shipment of Mercedes cars (36 units, 550,000 Gold-marks) if he (Jellinek) could sell these as exclusive concessionaire in Austria-Hungary, France, Belgium and USA. But under the name of Jellinek's car-races team: Mercedes. The prototype was finally built in 1901 (Maybach was 55 years old). In June 1902, after DMG noticed that Daimler trademark was conceded already to Panhard & Levasor for all France, allowed to renovate their business. Since then, baptizing also all their cars Mercedes.
In 1902 a great blaze razed DMG Cannstatt facilities and the company moved to Stuttgart-Untertuerkheim. Nonetheless, Daimler's Mercedes was a commercial success and Maybach continued developing mechanical marvels. In 1903-1904, a 6-cylinder/70 hp engine. In 1906 (at 60), the origin of the aviation with a high-speed racing engine of 120 hp (overhead intake, exhaust valves and double ignition).
But anew, DMG despised Maybach to an insignificant "Inventor's office". Grievance he responded abandoning the company in 1907 (61). Replaced by Paul Daimler. Also in 1907, the German Engineers Association (VDI) recognized Wilhelm Maybach as honorary member.
Zeppelin engines (1908)
In the year 1900, Maybach had first contact with Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin, who sought to improve Zeppelin's model LZ1 engine (12 hp). Maybach built for him engines based on some sketches of a futuristic 150 hp engine created by his son Karl (graduated as technician), in behalf of the DMG.
Years later (1908) Count Zeppelin attempted to sell his models LZ3 and LZ4 to the government. But while testing a LZ4, its engines failed, exploding against a tree after emergency-landing (August 5, at Echterdingen). Far from stuck, the project abetted Germans to donate spontaneously 6.25 million Gold-Marks. Count Zeppelin founded then the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH company --Company Builder of Zeppelin Airships--.
Then Maybach approached Count Zeppelin to offer start devising new airship engines. Despite Maybach held off for a while (still in litigation with the DMG), taking Karl his place. In March 23, 1909, a deal was finally inked creating the subsidiary Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH --anonymous company-- at Bissingen/Enz (Wuerttemberg region of Germany), replacing the DMG. Wilhelm Maybach was technical assistant, while Karl was technical manager. Their first engine designs reached 20 m/seg.
Wilhelm Maybach also assured Karl's commercial future --opposed to their DMG experience--. Moving the company to Friedrichshafen and re-baptizing it Luftfahrzeug-Motoren-GmbH--still anonymous--. Father and son assured 20% of the shares each, so Karl would inherit it. They kept serving Zeppelin while also working in other airship engines. In 1912, finally adopted the name Maybach-Motorenbau GmbH (Maybach engine construction society).
During the war (1916), they developed a 160 HP aircraft engine with 2000 units sold until the end of the conflict. In 1916 Wilhelm Maybach (70) was honored also by the Technical University of Stuttgart with a Honorary Doctorate.
Maybach cars (1922)
After the war, the Versailles Treaty (1919) filibustered any airship production over Germany. So Maybach produced diesel high-speed engines (for naval and railroad use) and petrol engines for automobiles, despite not building the rest of the car.
But small car makers in Germany used to build their own engines because costing reasons. Only the Spyker company was interested in 1920, but Wilhelm Maybach turned down the contract because inadequate conditions. Then opted to build complete automobiles.
Since 1921 the factory began to produce Maybach opulent automobiles inspired on the new Rolls Royce models. Presenting in the 1921 Berlin's Exposition the admired W3 model. With 6 cylinders, brakes in 4 wheels, new transmission system and 105 km/h. Produced until 1928, with 300 units sold, mostly sedan and luxury (against the unsuccessful sport two-seat version). Followed by the Maybach W5 (135 km/h); between 1927 and 1929, with 250 units sold.
In August 1929, Count Zeppelin flown over high altitudes --almost orbital-- with a Maybach-V12 engine of 550 HP. Then was produced the Maybach V12 car, of 150 HP (at 2800 RPM). First 12-cylinder German car, with lightweight engine --related to airships-- made of aluminum, pistons of light alloy, 7 liters capacity and great torque. Though only sold a few dozens, because the German postwar-crisis. In 1930 its successor was the DS7-Zeppelin car with 12 cylinders (7 liters).
In Stuttgart, the DMG had suffered the post-war economic crisis and banking pressure. So merged with the Carl Benz's Benz & Co. (Benz & Cie., Rheinische Gasmotorenfabrik Mannheim) in 1926, forming the Daimler Benz AG.
Wilhelm Maybach died at 83, on December 29, 1929.
Trivia
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- Wilhelm Maybach was accepted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1996.
- 3 Technical Schools in Germany are named Wilhelm Maybach: in Stuttgart, Heilbronn and Berlin Spandau.
- In 2002 Mercedes Benz began to produce its limousine models under the original (1919-1940) Maybach brand.
See also
- Gottlieb Daimler
- Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft
- Mercedes 35hp (1900)
- Mercedes Simplex
- Maybach
- Mercedes Benz
Bibliography
- Niemann, Harry: Mythos Maybach, 4. Aufl., Stuttgart 2002
- Niemann, Harry: Maybach - der Vater des Mercedes, 3. Aufl., Stuttgart 2000
- Niemann, Harry: Wilhelm Maybach - König der Konstrukteure, 1. Aufl., Stuttgart 1995
- Rathke, Kurt: Wilhelm Maybach - Anbruch eines neuen Zeitalters, 1. Aufl., Friedrichshafen 1953
- Rauck, Max J.: Wilhelm Maybach: der grosse Automobilkonstrukteur. Baar 1979.