Mercedes-Benz

“ The able assistance of William Maybach brought further credit to the company, particularly in view of the aspirating carbureter which, with such details as clutch and transmission mechanism, helped to perfect the Cannstadt automobiles. In the latter nineties the prominence of the Daimler Works as vehicle makers, distinguished from motor makers, again began to be noticed and soon their now famous Mercedes cars appeared. In recent years these machines have made remarkable records in races and all other branches of the sport. ”

“ The Motor.—The first Lebaudy had a 40-horse-power Daimler-Mercedes benzine motor. The Patrie was driven by a 60 to 70-horse-power 4-cylinder Panhard and Levassor benzine motor, making 1,000 r. p. m.
The Propellers.—There are two steel propellers 81⁄2 feet in diameter (two blades each) placed at each side of the engine, this giving the shortest and most economical transmission. To avoid any tendency to twist the car, the propellers turn in opposite directions. They are “high speed,” making 1,000 to 1,200 r. ”

“ He hunched forward in the pit and concentrated every bit of his attention and all his prayers on getting the two Daimler-Benz engines started.
One second, one minute, one hour, or maybe a thousand years dragged by before the two engines "caught" and roared in a mighty earth-shaking duet of power. ”

“ From side members COOLING: Water; cellular radiator IGNITION: Make-and-break CURRENT SUPPLY: Simms-Bosch Magneto CARBURETER: Mercedes LUBRICATION: Mechanical force feed oiler, ratchet-driven MOTOR-CONTROL: Spark and throttle CLUTCH: Mercedes coil spring CHANGE GEAR: Sliding type SPEEDS: 4 forward and reverse CHANGE-GEAR CONTROL: Side lever, selective system DRIVE: Side chains
American Mercedes, 70 H.P. Daimler Mfg. Co., Long Island City, N. Y.
PRICE: $10,000 BODY: Demi-Limousine SEATS: 7 persons WEIGHT: 2,980 pounds WHEEL-BASE: 127 inches TREAD: 57 inches TIRES, FRONT: 910 × 100 mm. ”

“ The first automobile imported into the United States was a Benz car brought to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Up to 1917 the Benz car was an entrant in most automobile speed contests.
While Benz was perfecting the gasoline motor in its attachment to the tricycle, Gottlieb Daimler, another German, was producing, in 1885, the motor-cycle. Daimler had devoted himself70 sedulously to the problem of reducing the weight and increasing the power of the gas engine, in order to adapt it to high efficiency road vehicles. He invented the hot tube ignition to take the place of ignition by flame. ”

“ Gasoline Car.—Markus, of Vienna, built a gasoline car in 1877, and this was followed by Levassor, the engineer of Panhard and Levassor, in France, who used Daimler’s invention in the development of their car. Gottlieb Daimler, the father of the automobile industry, produced the first practical gasoline motor, his invention being based on the four-cycle type of engine.
The invention of the gasoline, or the Internal Combustion Engine as it is called, was the first great advance. The weight of the fuel was so small, compared with the power produced, that it revolutionized the art. ”

“ He decided to wait a little longer and ascertain the facts about the Mercedes. A month later he purchased one. Mrs. Saumarez’s chauffeur, a smart young mechanic from Bremen, who spoke English fluently, demonstrated [Pg 39] that the buyer was given more than his money’s worth. The amiable Briton wondered how such things could be, but was content to benefit personally. He, in time, spread the story. German cars enjoyed a year’s boomlet in that part of Yorkshire. With nearly every car came a smart young chauffeur mechanic. ”

“ The car should be powerful enough to draw an extra van or two on occasion, since horses and heavy luggage may sometimes accompany the passengers. Messrs. Dick, Kerr, and Company have built a car, which, when loaded with its complement of passengers, weighs about sixteen tons. The motive power is supplied by two four-cylinder petrol engines of the Daimler type, each giving 36 h.p. These are suspended on a special frame, independent of that which carries the coach body, so that the passengers are not troubled by the vibration of the engines, even when the vehicle is at rest. ”

“ The fact that will assert itself directly we have a proper supply of easy, quick, and comfortable motor-cars available, is the fact just named—i.e. that we live on roads and do not live on railways. The circumstance that a motor-car can stop at the garden gate if we live by a highway, or drive up the carriage-drive and draw up level with the porch if we live within lodge-gates, and take a man direct to the door of his office, or of his friend, or wherever he wants to go to, is bound to make the motor-car beat the train for all short-distance work. ”

“ In 1880 he began to commercialize a two-cycle stationary engine. In 1883 he organized his business as Benz & Co., and produced his first vehicle in 1884. In the beginning of 1885 his three-wheeled vehicle ran through the streets of Mannheim, Germany, attracting much attention with its noisy exhaust. This was the subject of his patent dated January 29, 1886, claimed by him to be the first German patent on a light oil motor vehicle. This embodied a horizontal flywheel belt transmission through a differential and two chains to the wheels ”

“ Few undertakings require more care and caution than the choice of a motor-car. Of the three or four hundred types and varieties now in existence, many are of no practical use, some are extremely complicated, not a few dangerous, and many more or less faulty in construction. The difficulty of the choice is increased by the fact that almost every enthusiast recommends the particular kind of carriage he himself possesses, and in addition every manufacturer claims, and possibly believes, that his is the only possible automobile. ”

“ That it will be awakened I cannot doubt, when motor-cars become cheaper, when the prejudice against them has died out completely, and when men find, as they soon will, that it is more economical to keep a motor-car, not only than a carriage and pair, but than a horse and trap. ”

“ New Orleans Car
Assuming that the purchaser has 500l. to lay out, for that sum he can get a six or seven horse-power carriage with the Daimler type of engine, capable of carrying four people including the driver, with a covered top for wet weather. Nay, if he is satisfied with a light and frail open carriage he could obtain one of much higher horse-power, and a speed up to between thirty and forty miles an hour but this is a mere racing machine for those who desire to travel speedily without any protection against the weather. ”

“ I never allow the mechanical portion of the motor-car to interfere with the interior of the carriage, a rule which experience has taught me to be very necessary. Your motor-car engineer as a rule gives but little heed to the carriage part of his vehicle; to him the engine is all in all, and he will not hesitate to thrust some of his oily belongings into the interior of one's vehicle unless such a rule as that which I have made is strictly laid down and sternly kept. ”

“ Public motor-cars, corresponding in size, power, and appearance to the London motor-bus, run regularly between Santiago and Corunna. The berlina will seat eight persons, but not more than half a dozen are booked as a rule. The accom [Pg 134] modation is equal to that of an English first-class compartment, the entrances being at the sides, like a railway carriage. The rear and larger part of the vehicle is given to second-class passengers, who enter at the end. In front there is room for two or three people, and a passenger may sit beside the driver and enjoy the air and scenery. ”

“ Gottlieb Daimler’s engine marked a great advance in the production of a source of motive power, for its efficiency was large as compared with its total weight, whilst the simplicity of its fuel system brought it within the scope of the person of average mechanical instincts and intelligence, for, even in its early days, the internal-combustion motor did not demand that its user should possess an intimate knowledge of engineering. ”

“ Whether you consider the motor from the town or country station point of view, the fact that there are no horses to get tired, and that the motor will run, providing it is efficiently handled, for any hour or all hours during the twenty-four, makes it inevitable that every country house of any dimensions, and nearly every private carriage-owner in London, will have a motor-car of some sort or kind in coming years. ”

“ But in reply to this it must be remembered that the workable gas engine had been invented as early as 1860, and that the Otto engine, of which the Daimler is a modification, was patented as early as 1876. These developments, it will be noted, took place at just about the time when the new interest in the automobile had been aroused, as evidenced by the repressive British legislation just referred to. It can be but little in question that had the early interest in the British automobile been maintained, inventive genius would long since have provided a suitable motor. ”

“ Were I ordering a new omnibus, I should not do so without at least a twelve-horse engine and seating capacity for ten, with luggage; and for heavy work in hilly country an even higher horse-power would be very desirable. My carriage was converted by an ordinary firm of London carriage-builders, who made no pretence of building lightly, and who were not aware that long journeys at twelve miles an hour will in time cause the windows to shake. ”

“ The motor engine and the aeroplane are inseparably connected; one is as necessary to the other as clay is to the potter's wheel, or coal to the blast-furnace. This being the case, it is well that we trace briefly the development of the engine during the last quarter of a century.
The original mechanical genius of the motoring industry was Gottlieb Daimler, the founder of the immense Daimler Motor Works of Coventry. Perhaps nothing in the world of industry has made more rapid strides during the last twenty years than automobilism. ”

“ In addition to gas, which is applicable for stationary motors only, the fuel may be benzine of a specific gravity of sixty-eight or seventy one-hundredths, or ordinary lamp petroleum. The consumption varies according to the size of the motor, ranging [Pg 98] from thirty-six to forty-five one-hundredths kilograms per horse-power hour for vehicles, or somewhat less for boats. He adapted these light motors to vehicles of many styles, and his persistent work in this connection has made the world-wide reputation of the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, now flourishing at Cannstadt, Germany. ”

“ For automobile enterprises that took the wrong road and got mired in the mud of mechanical and management difficulties and financial complications were, most of them, lifted out of the slough by men who knew the right road and were better drivers. Had the automobile developed mechanically to near-perfection a score of years before it did, not only would the people as a mass not have been ready for it, but it is doubtful if business at that period had developed to the point of efficiency where it could recognize the possibilities latent in the motor car as a money-making machine. ”

“ Yet that is what many people are expecting, forgetful of the fact that a motor-car is a horse and carriage in one, that its stable bill is of the smallest, that it ceases to consume oil or spirit immediately it is at rest, and that although its tyre bill, and accounts for occasional repairs, may be high, it is not subject to half the troubles that worry the owner of even the best-conducted horse stables. ”

“ It began to be plain that certain features must be present in every first-class car. Hence came the standardization of the mechanism, which is a big step forward.
What is the result to-day? The automobile has become less of a designing proposition and more of a manufacturing proposition; less of an engineering problem and more of a factory problem. The whole, wide throbbing range of the business is bending to one great end—to meet a demand which, up to the present time, has exceeded the supply.
You have only to go to Detroit to see this pulsating drama of production in action. ”

“ Concurrently with its development into a reliable, silent, odourless and smokeless power-propelled vehicle, the motor-car gradually came into more general use. It no longer appealed only to a few but gained converts daily, and its final triumph came when it began seriously to displace the horsed vehicle. becoming the private carriage of the wealthier classes to be used on all occasions. ”

“ It is equaled only by the internal combustion gas engine, which is a factor in making it practical and efficient.
Gasoline-propelled vehicles have become one of man’s greatest aids in business efficiency, but nevertheless it is very important that we consider the facts, that the adoption of the automobile by man for business, commerce and pleasure is on a very large scale, and that the production by manufacturers is so great that very little thought is given to proper care, which is an ever-present factor in economical operation and a fair return for the investment. ”

“ Car [2]
to-day as it was in 1896, and my six-horse Daimler, though only two years old, has done an enormous amount of rough work, and is in every respect as good as on the day it was made. My steam-engines have given me some trouble, though improvements are being devised with great rapidity; but in the smaller types the necessity of taking water, nominally every fifty miles but in reality much oftener than that, their fragility of construction and difficulty of management in a high wind, render them at present only useful to those who thoroughly enjoy a mechanical task. ”