The first of the many
Gottlieb Daimler’s Reitwagen was built as a testbed for his engine, and largely unintentionally the world’s first motorcycle.
SOME consider it the world’s first motorcycle. Yet, despite its revolutionary mark on the world, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach’s ‘Reitwagen’ –‘riding car’ – was merely a stepping stone with which to experiment a much bolder concept: the transportation of human beings via an engine. Built in wood, the machine was never commercially produced but it was test ridden and it was the world’s first vehicle to be propelled by an internal combustion engine.
And thanks to the modest, odd-looking wooden motorcycle, the wheels of modern transportation had been squarely set in motion. The Reitwagen was not merely a vessel for advancing Daimler’s engine design; it was a vessel for modernity. It was also an expression of Daimler’s lifelong and near-instinctive belief in the power of the internal combustion engine.
Mercedes-Benz Classic archivist Daniela Sigl explained: “It was one of Gottlieb Daimler’s earliest goals to produce a motorised two-wheeler. In fact, his son, Paul, is recorded as saying: “I remember very clearly that my father, even at the time when he lived in Deutz (Cologne) and managed Nicolaus Otto’s machine factory there, expressed the thought over and over again that it must be something indescribably marvellous to own a vehicle that, powered by a motor, developed a corresponding speed and allowed at least one person to use the country roads freely and unbound.”
Meticulous drawer
Gottlieb Daimler was born in Schorndorf in Wurttemberg, Germany, on March 17, 1834. He devoted his childhood to inventing new toys and after leaving school was single-mindedly focused on pursuing an education in engineering. “He went to the respected Latin school, but also attended on Sundays technical drawing classes, an offer that was only open to exceptional students,” said Daniela. “He was an avid and very meticulous drawer, even in his younger years. Some of the drawings from this period are kept in the Mercedes-Benz Classic Archives. The oldest drawing book stems from 1847, when Gottlieb was 13 years of age.”
Among his drawings were sketches of deer, foxes and even more exotic animals like a kangaroo and a llama. Daniela said: “In later drawing books we can see that he was fascinated with landscapes, architecture – castles, cloisters and farmsteads. On his later travels, for example to Russia, he kept up the habit and made drawings of his impressions as well as keeping a journal.”
It’s perhaps unsurprising that upon leaving Realschule (secondary school) in 1848, he was certified as having ‘Exceptional skills in geometry and stereometry as well as letter calculations.’
“He turned 14 that year and became apprenticed to a gunsmith in Schorndorf. This gave him a thorough grounding in precision mechanics and in working with explosive forces,” adds Daniela.
The test of his apprenticeship was the ‘Journeyman’s Examination,’ for which he had to engineer a doublebarrelled pistol. But Gottlieb was an enterprising spirit, according to Daniela, and as such always wanted to push himself further. “He wanted to dig deeper into the art of engineering, so he left his hometown Schorndorf and attended the Industrial Trade School in Stuttgart. There he came to the notice of Ferdinand Steinbeis from the Royal Centre for Trade and Industry, who in 1853 found
four years’ worth of work for Daimler at an engineering works in Graffenstaden in the Alsace region. Here, outside of working hours, Daimler received theoretical tuition that gave him basis for the following engineering course at the Polytechnic School in Stuttgart.
“His results were so good that he was subsequently allowed to skip the first two years of his engineering course at the Polytechnic School in Stuttgart and was exempted from tuition fees. Following another period of work at Graffenstaden, the young engineer moved in mid-1860 to the Périn band-saw factory in Paris. From spring 1861 to the end of 1862 he also visited various locations in England and became acquainted with the British mechanical engineering industry.”
Daimler’s acquaintance with the British mechanical engineering industry included – among others – a stint at the precision tooling factory of Sir Joseph Whitworth in Manchester, one of the most important engineering industrialists of his era and who we can thank for, among many things, standardisation of screw threads, one of the earliest examples of the sniper rifle, Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery and Christie’s hospital.
On return from Britain, Daimler went to work as a draughtsman in Geislingen in 1863, as a forerunner of the Württembergische Metallwarenfabrik company (WMF). In December that year, he started a role as a workshop inspector at the Bruderhaus engineering works in Reutlingen, a charitable institution where, a year later, he came to know Wilhelm Maybach. “From then on, Maybach accompanied Gottlieb Daimler at every stage of his professional career,” explains Daniela. Indeed, this friendship and partnership would be crucial to the creation of the Reitwagen, but more of that later…
With Maybach in tow, the pieces of Daimler’s career as the master of the internal combustion engine had started to come together. Then, in 1872 Eugen Langen appointed Daimler to the management of Gasmotoren-Fabrik Deutz AG, under the technical directorship of Nicolaus August Otto. Of course, Maybach soon joined him.
HO Duncan, in his World on Wheels (1924), describes the impact Daimler had at Deutz. He writes: “Under Daimler’s careful and thoroughly expert management, this firm developed in a short time from a small workshop into a large concern enjoying a world-wide reputation.”
Deutz’s main output was gas engines and it was thanks to Daimler – according to Duncan – that Otto’s business began to prosper. He writes: “….the old gas engines were improved. Indeed, the first 100hp explosion gas engine originated with Daimler.”
Daniela explains: “These engines were big and were connected to a gas line and therefore just used stationary
and not movable. Daimler was engaged to optimise production processes and create a specialist department for development and design. Daimler insisted on having Maybach to assist him and in 1873, Maybach was appointed chief designer. For some time, they were successful and their combined efforts made Deutz one of the biggest engine manufacturers worldwide.”
But in 1881, during a speculative business trip to Russia, Daimler decided to leave Deutz, a decision based on irreconcilable differences in the desired direction of the firm. Daniela said: “He left the company a wealthy and financially independent man and decided to go back to his roots in southern Germany. He bought a mansion in Taubenheimstrasse in Cannstatt for 75,000 Goldmarks and moved there with his wife Emma and five children in June 1882.”
Once again, his accomplice, Mayback, accompanied him and together – in secret – in Daimler’s glass-fronted garden house, the pair would embark on developing an engine that was to have profound implications for human transportation. “Together they were a force to be reckoned with,” said Daniela. “Daimler was the engineer with the vision and Maybach the tinkerer. With his good friend and business partner they developed the world’s first, small, lightweight high-speed engine which was, above all, suitable for powering a vehicle, even it if was as small as the Reitwagen and suited for the transport of a single person.”
On August 29, 1885, Gottlieb Daimler registered a patent for a two-wheeled ‘vehicle with gas or petroleum engine’ (patent no. DRP 36 423 issued on August 11, 1886). The wooden test vehicle, the ‘Reitwagen’ – which produced 0.5hp / 0.37 kW – would be the world’s first motorcycle.
Revolutionising mobility
But there were many obstacles to the development of the Reitwagen, as Daniela explains: “We have the feeling that our world is that much more restricted than before, but Daimler and Maybach faced a lot of troubles on their way to revolutionising mobility, not just with their investors, but mainly with the stubbornness and prejudices of people. People, especially the Germans, back then were much more sceptical concerning new inventions and new ways of doing things. They were afraid of the first self-moving vehicles and often met them with incomprehension and anger. The earliest test vehicles were damned as ‘Teufelskarren’ (devil’s carts). So it was hard to convince them of the benefits of the engines.”
And if inventing a machine branded a ‘devil mobile’ wasn’t bad enough, there were official barriers to contend with too. “There were very many police and municipal requirements and restrictions. Testing a new invention was no small feat: it was not allowed to test an ‘unsecure’ invention on public roads. There were high fines, which is why the first test-drives of Benz with the Benz-Patent-Motorcar (the first automobile in the world) took place in the factory yard.” She said: “It is no accident, that Adolf Daimler was the first one to ride the Reitwagen in public. He was a boy and therefore less prosecutable than his father or Maybach.”
Then there were issues with espionage, which was notorious around the time Daimler was developing his internal combustion engine. “Daimler had to work in secret. There were no drones and social media wasn’t around at that time but they still had to work under
secrecy. Daimler’s sons, Paul and Adolf, for example, were only allowed to visit the ‘laboratoire d’essais,’ the laboratory of secrets,’ on Sundays.”
The need for secrecy meant that Daimler and
Maybach worked in the garden house with shrouded windows so as not to attract attention. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect: “As they worked in a garden house with shrouded windows under constant hammering and knocking, people in the neighbourhood began to talk and on one fateful evening Daimler and Maybach were surprised by a knock on the door and a crowd of police officers and officials shouting: ‘In the name of the law you are hereby ….’ The policemen expected to see a counterfeiting operation, only to discover Mayback and Daimler and their engine parts.”
Eventually, on November 10, 1885, Daimler’s son
Adolf took the Reitwagen on its maiden voyage – a trip that was no doubt memorable for Daimler Junior. He rode from Cannstatt to Untertürkheim (2.5km or a mile and a half ), reaching speeds of up to 12kph (about 7½mph) but as the engine was located directly under the seat, Adolf ’s bottom started to overheat. “The seat got pretty hot after a short amount of time and although it was November, the ride got pretty ‘interesting' for Adolf, who sat so to speak on the ‘Hot-Seat”, said Daniela. Adolf remedied the issue by jumping off the vehicle.
Roasting buttocks aside, it was mission accomplished: the Reitwagen proved the feasibility of Daimler and Maybach’s internal combustion engine – commonly known as the ‘Grandfather Clock’ because of its shape. And while the vehicle was the first internal combustionpowered motorcycle, Daimler had no intention of producing a motorcycle commercially.
“The Reitwagen was a mere test vehicle,” said Daniela. “You could almost say that Daimler and Maybach constructed a vehicle around their small high-speed internal combustion engine, the so-called ‘Grandfather Clock’ engine (filed for patent on 03.04.1885, Patent
No. DRP 34926). The general inspiration was probably a bicycle or a Draisine, a German precursor of the bicycle. For stability-reasons, Daimler opted for wood as the material for the frame, instead of metal. They constructed everything themselves.”
The engine itself ran with a displacement of 265 cubic centimetres with an output of 0.4 kW at 600rpm. Power was transmitted from the engine belt pulley via a drive belt to the rear wheels and offered two speeds: 6 or 12kph (depending on the belt pulley selected at standstill). “It was not only the first gasoline-powered vehicle but also the world's first motorcycle, named ‘Riding Cycle’ or ‘Riding Car,’” said Daniela. “It was proof on wheels that the internal combustion engine was capable of powering a road-going vehicle and that a human being could fully control it. Indeed, in the case of the riding car, by sitting astride the engine the driver was seen to take complete control of the machine with the objective of locomotion, using just a few levers to set the vehicle in motion. The riding car therefore gave to the world an important and lasting signal of what was achievable.
Motorised carriage
“Once they were sure that the engine worked and was suited for moving a vehicle they looked for a more appropriate and ‘popular’ accommodation for their engine. In 1886, Daimler ordered an ‘American’ carriage from W. Wimpff & Sohn in Stuttgart. The carriage was delivered on August 28 and secretly brought to Daimler's home during the night, ostensibly as a birthday present for Emma Daimler. The engine, together with the drawbar steering, was installed under the supervision of Maybach at Maschinenfabrik Esslingen. Following the Patent
Motor Car of Carl Benz by a few months, the Daimler ‘Motorised Carriage’ became the world's first fourwheeled automobile.” Incidentally, Benz and Daimler were never aware of each other’s inventions – despite being only 60 miles apart. The pair didn’t meet until their inventions were patented and publicly presented.
And while the Reitwagen was never intended to be further developed as a motorcycle, it had a lasting impact on motorcycle technology. The Daimler engine principle was certainly adopted in the first Hildebrand & Wolfmüller motorcycle (1894) and the general configuration of the Reitwagen remains to this day.
The Reitwagen is on display at the Mercedes museum in Stuttgart: www.mercedes-benz.com/en/classic/ museum/