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 On this day in engineering history, the Imperial German Patent Office granted Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach Patent No. 28022 for an "uncooled, heat-insulated engine with unregulated hot-tube ignition". Although the engineering duo had struggled to develop a reliable, self-fired ignition system, the use of a porcelain tube protruding from the cylinder head allowed them to speed past other inventors. Daimler nicknamed the four-stroke, gasoline-powered design standhur (grandfather's clock) because of its resemblance to an old pendulum clock. The basic design featured a single, horizontal cylinder; a large, cast-iron flywheel, and cam-operated exhaust valves. Although Daimler's nickname for the 600-rpm engine conjured up images of times past, the "grandfather clock" was an important step on the road to an automotive future. Today, many historians consider the Daimler-Maybach design to be a prototype - if not the very precursor - of the modern petrol engine.
Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach developed the "grandfather clock engine" inside of a brick workshop at Daimler's home near Stuttgart in southern Germany. Although suspicious neighbors once summoned the police to search the premises for counterfeiting equipment, the authorities found only engines there. Daimler, the son of a master baker, had purchased his home quite legally, earning 112,000 gold marks in a settlement from his former employer, a Cologne-based mechanical engineering firm called Deutz-AG-Gasmotorenfabrik. While working as the technical director at Deutz, Daimler had studied the four-stroke cycle invented by Nikolaus August Otto, one of the Deutz's owners. For his part, Wilhelm Maybach served as chief designer for a gas-powered engine which Otto and Daimler now sought to develop. Personality differences (perhaps even jealousy) led Otto to fire Daimler, however, and in 1882 Daimler left Deutz with Maybach's allegiance and compensation for earlier patents.
Nikolaus August Otto challenged the patent that Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach won on April 3, 1885, but ultimately lost his legal battle. In the end, Daimler's testimony in court and the careful wording of Patent No. 28022 denied Deutz-AG the right to use the unregulated hot-tube ignition system for free. In 1886, Otto suffered another defeat when a German court invalidated the Otto-cycle engine patent, claiming that a French engineer, Alphonse Beau de Rochas, had described the four-stroke principle in a privately-published pamphlet in 1862.
Resources:
http://www.mbusa.com/heritage/gottlieb-daimler.do
http://www.bookrags.com/Gottlieb_Daimler#The_Grandfather_Clock_Engine_.281885.29
http://www.mbusa.com/heritage/gottlieb-daimler.do
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:bTiImw8DUgcJ:stanley.mccandless.en.wikimiki.org/en/April%2B3+DRP-28-022+april&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottlieb_Daimler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolaus_Otto
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