Introduction
Germany cannot forget the pioneer of combustion engines ‘Gottlieb Daimler’ and his contribution towards an industrial and post-industrial society. Daimler’s academic-industrial career began in 1876 when Daimler designed an entire exquisite gas engine along with his partner Otto. As a mechanical engineer, Daimler embodied the engine based on the four-stroke principle. This was an immense improvement over all the earlier types’ inventions, and the company enjoyed much success with this ‘Silent Otto’ engine, which is patented. Bardou et al (1982), writes in his book that Daimler was the one to make the ‘Silent Otto’ engine use in water and road vehicles and according to Ayres (2001) Gottlieb Damien was the one who enhanced Otto’s compact engines thereby making them more useful towards Industrial Society. According to Bardou et al (1982), “It would be incorrect to credit Benz alone as the ‘father’ of the automobile, for one cannot ignore the independent experiments conducted by Gottlieb Daimler”.
Solving the problem of more power and less weight
Daimler while realizing the then basic problem of obtaining more power with less weight, aimed to solve it by increasing the speed of the engine and remained successful to an extent. Finding that neither electrical nor gas-flame ignition operated effectively at speeds over 250 rpm, he adopted instead an incandescent-tube ignition system. After designing an ‘automobile’ he went throughout Europe for exposure. When with approached exposition, Daimler arrived in Paris with a new four-wheeled automobile, it was rather crude and contained nothing remarkable except its engine, a new design in which two cylinders were arranged in a V shape. This engine turned at more than 600 rpm and supplied almost two horsepower. It was a major step forward in the search for a lightweight power source for vehicles. Still, French entrepreneurs took advantage of Daimler’s brilliant work on engines more quickly than did the Germans. Daimler enjoyed much less success with automobiles in these years. In 1890 he found financial backing and formed the Daimler Motor Company. It concentrated on manufacturing engines, especially motorboats.
While Benz was turning out hundreds of cars in the late 1890s, Daimler was making dozens. From 1895 to 1897 Gottlieb Daimler along with Wilhelm Maybach gradually regained managerial control of the Daimler Motor Company and produced a few cars, making only the engines in the Cannstatt factory. An engineer or an industrialist, Daimler kept busy adapting his engines to new uses, designing racing cars, buses, trucks, and rail cars. Like most European automobile engineers of this period, he found more satisfaction in design innovations than in identifying and solving production problems. During these years, his health failed and he died in March 1900.
The German rate of growth
The German Industry due to expansion of production from 1908, resulted in a sharp increase in exports. The German rate of growth in the period 1907-13 averaged 25 percent annually, and an increasing proportion went to exports, about 36 percent in 1912. Such exports were slightly under half the value of the French. German cars far outsold French ones on the Russian and Austro-Hungarian markets and had begun to appear in strength in Argentina and Brazil, but offered no serious threat to the French business in Britain, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. Daimler’s powerful and prestigious cars made by these concerns sold well in Russia, where the aristocracy had a slight interest in the small and light cars designed for a middle-class market. In the German case, it was almost a rule that those automobile firms once in the bicycle trade would be the ones to develop small cars, as proved by Opel, Brennabor, NSU, and Wanderer. Small cars made by the first two of these sold well, showing that in Germany, too, the market was good for this type. There is no doubt that Daimler changed the most technical advances for cars, and that even from industries outside auto manufacturing, such as steel, petrochemicals, rubber tires, and glass. It is considered that Europe is responsible for producing the most technical innovations in the Industrial Era and the credit does not go to Europe without Daimler’s contribution.
The few striking innovations by automakers were installed only on a few luxury cars: the rotary engine, air suspension, and electronic fuel injection. The use of diesel engines in passenger cars was simply an adaptation of this power plant from light trucks. As for trucks and buses, though they have profited from the considerable improvements in diesel engines and methods of production and assembly, the industry has not succeeded with the gas turbine, widely viewed in the early 1950s as the technology of the future. While considering the size of the world auto industry, Daimler firm sought the experiments to respond to problems of labor organization in the early 1970s as it realized that those were for the most part hardly on the same scale as the importance of the conflicts, strikes, and revolts, despite the significant drop in production such belligerence brought. The reorganization efforts are still conducted in many organizations including Daimler-Benz in Germany.
Conclusion
Daimler-Mercedes along with Benz continued to aim at the upper half of the price range. The two firms followed a similar policy of offering a wide variety of passenger cars and trucks. Like Benz, Daimler established a separate truck factory. Benz expanded more rapidly, raising its capital from 4 million arks in 1909 to 22 million in 1913, and employing up to 9,000 workers to make about 4,500 vehicles.
References
Ayres, U. Robert, (2001). How Economists Have Misjudged Global Warming In: Magazine Title: World Watch. Vol:14, 5. Page Number: 12.
Bardou Jean Pierre, Chanaron Jean Jacques, Friderson Patrick & Laux James. (1982) The Automobile Revolution: The Impact of an Industry: University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, NC.
Wernle Bradford, Automotive News Europe. 2007. Web.