Daimler, Gottlieb Wilhelm 
1834 - 1900. 
German engineer who pioneered the car
and the internal combustion engine.

Worked together with Wilhelm Maybach. In 1885 he produced a motor bicycle and in 1889 his first four wheeled motor vehicle. He combined the vaporization of fuel with the high speed four=stroke petrol engine. Daimler's work on the internal combustion engine began in earnest in 1872 when he teamed up with Nikolaus Otto at a gas engine works; Maybach was the chief designer. Daimler built his first petrol engines 1883. The Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft was founded 1890, and Daimler engines were also manufactured under licence; a Daimler powered car won the first international car race: Paris to Rouen 1894. Daimler was born near Stuttgart and trained as a mechanical engineer at the Stuttgart Polytechnic. He gained factory experience in various engineering works, including that of English engineer Joseph Whitworth in Manchester. In France he many have seen J J E Lenoir's newly developed gas engine. Daimler's first working petrol=fuelled unit was an air cooled, single cylinder engine with a large cast iron flywheel running at 900 rpm. The second engine was fitted to a bicycle in Nov 1885 (possibly even earlier). Daimler went on to try his engine as the power source for a boat.