Daimler Reitwagen

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Daimler Reitwagen
Suspension
None
BrakesFront: none
Rear: shoe
TiresIron over wood rim, wood spokes.
Rake, trail0°, 0 mm
Weight90 kg (200 lb)[1] (dry)

The Daimler Reitwagen ("riding car") or Einspur ("single track") was a

internal combustion motorcycle,[9][10][11] and the forerunner of all vehicles, land, sea and air, that use its overwhelmingly popular engine type.[12][13][14][15]

First motorcycle?

The Reitwagen's status as the first motorcycle rests on whether the definition of motorcycle includes having an internal combustion engine. The

rake and trail.[14][17] For this and other reasons motoring author David Burgess-Wise called the Daimler-Maybach "a crude makeshift", saying that "as a bicycle, it was 20 years out of date."[18] Cycle World's Technical Editor Kevin Cameron, however, maintains that steam power was a dead end and the Reitwagen was the first motorcycle because it hit upon the successful engine type, saying, "History follows things that succeed, not things that fail."[14]

one-cylinder gasoline-engined tricycle, the Motrice Pia, is considered by a few sources as the first gasoline internal combustion motorcycle, and in fact the first ever internal combustion vehicle,[19][20] so Bernardi mounted his engine on the bicycle of his son,[21]
while Dailmer designed and built the Reitwagen chassis to fit the needs of his machine and so the first all around motorbike. The Motrice Pia is not mentioned in any mainstream sources. While there is some discussion in mainstream sources of the merits of Michaux-Perreaux steam velocipede or Roper steam velocipede versus the Reitwagen, there is no debate that considers the merits of the Motrice Pia.

Development

twist grip belt tensioner, a complex steering linkage and a belt drive. The working model had a simple handlebar and used a pinion gear
drive.

Gottlieb Daimler visited Paris in 1861 and spent time observing the first internal combustion engine developed by

Etienne Lenoir.[22]
This experience would be helpful later when he joined Nikolaus August Otto's company N.A. Otto & Cie (Otto and Company).

In 1872 Gottlieb Daimler had become the director of N.A. Otto & Cie the world's largest engine manufacturer.[23] Otto's company had created the first successful gaseous fuel engine in 1864 and in 1876 finally succeeded in creating a compressed charge gaseous petroleum engine due to the direction of Daimler and his plant engineer Wilhelm Maybach. Because of this success Otto's company name was changed to Gasmotoren Fabrik Deutz (Now Deutz AG) the next year when the plant was moved.[24]

The Garden House in Cannstatt

Otto had no interest in making engines small enough to be used in transportation. After some dispute over the direction design of the engines should take Daimler left Deutz and took Maybach with him. Together they moved to the town Cannstatt where they began work on a "high speed explosion engine." This goal was achieved in 1883 with the development of their first engine, a horizontal cylinder engine that ran on

petroleum naptha. The Otto engines were incapable of running at speeds much higher than 150 to 200 rpm and were not designed to be throttled. Daimler's goal was to build an engine small enough that it could be used to power a wide range of transportation equipment with a minimum rotation speed of 600 rpm. This was realized with the 1883 engine. The next year Daimler and Maybach developed a vertical cylinder model which is called the Grandfather Clock engine and achieved 700 rpm and soon 900 rpm was achieved.[25]
This was made possible by the Hot-Tube ignition which was developed by an Englishman named Watson. The electrical systems of that era were unreliable and too slow to allow those speeds.

Having achieved the goals of producing a throttling engine with high enough RPM that was small enough to be used in transportation Daimler and Maybach built the 1884 engine into a two-wheeled test frame which was patented as the "Petroleum Reitwagen" (Petroleum Riding Car). This test machine demonstrated the feasibility of a liquid petroleum engine which used a compressed fuel charge to power an automobile. Daimler is often referred to as the Father of the Automobile.[26]

"The first motorcycle looks like an instrument of torture", wrote Melissa Holbrook Pierson, describing a vehicle that was created along the way to Daimler's real goal, a four-wheeled car, and earning him credit as the inventor of the motorcycle "malgré lui," in spite of himself.[27]

Daimler had founded an experimental workshop in the garden shed behind his house in Cannstatt near Stuttgart in 1882.

flywheels and had an aluminum crankcase.[13]

Daimler's and Maybach's next step was to install the engine in a test bed to prove the viability of their engine in a vehicle.[13] Their goal was to learn what the engine could do, and not to create a motorcycle; it was just that the engine prototype was not yet powerful enough for a full size carriage.[10][28]

The Daimler-Maybach grandfather clock engine of 1885

The original design of 1884 used a

twist grip on the handlebars which applied the brake when turned one way and tensioned the drive belt, applying power to the wheel, when turned the other way.[28] Roper's velocipede of the late 1860s used a similar two way twistgrip handlebar control.[31][32] The plans also called for steering linkage shafts that made two right angle bends connected with gears, but the actual working model used a simple handlebar without the twist grip or gear linkage.[33] The design was patented on August 29, 1885.[34][35]

It had a 264-cubic-centimetre (16.1 cu in) single-cylinder Otto cycle four-stroke engine mounted on rubber blocks, with two iron tread wooden wheels and a pair of spring-loaded outrigger wheels to help it remain upright.[13] Its engine output of 0.37 kW (0.5 hp) at 600 rpm gave it a speed of about 11 km/h (6.8 mph).[1] Daimler's 17-year-old son, Paul, rode it first on November 18, 1885, going 5–12 kilometres (3.1–7.5 mi), from Cannstatt to Untertürkheim, Germany.[3][28] The seat caught fire on that excursion,[1][28] the engine's hot tube ignition being located directly underneath.[36] Over the winter of 1885–1886 the belt drive was upgraded to a two-stage, two-speed transmission with a belt primary drive and the final drive using a ring gear on the back wheel.[28] By 1886 the Reitwagen had served its purpose and was abandoned in favor of further development on four wheeled vehicles.[28]

Replicas

The original Reitwagen was destroyed in the

Guggenheim Las Vegas The Art of the Motorcycle exhibition in 2001.[2] The replicas vary as to which version they follow. The one at the AMA Hall of Fame is larger than the original and uses the complex belt tensioner and steering linkage seen in the 1884 plans,[33][37] while the Deutsches Museum's replica has the simple handlebar, as well as the ring gear on the rear wheel.[2]
KTM have borrowed the replica Reitwagen from the Mercedes-Benz Museum and have it on show in their "Living Workshop" at their Motohall Museum in Mattighofen, Austria

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 1-4054-3952-1
  2. ^
    ISBN 0-8109-9106-3
  3. ^
    ISBN 1-56799-460-1
  4. ^
    ISBN 1-4054-5466-0
  5. ISBN 1-56458-303-1
  6. ^ Carr, Sandra (January 20, 2006), "Art That Roars!", Orlando Sentinel, p. 46, archived from the original on 2017-01-04, retrieved 2011-02-11
  7. ^ Forgey, Benjamin (July 5, 1998), "Article: A Wheelie Big Show; 'Art of the Motorcycle' Speeds Down the Guggenheim's Spiral", The Washington Post, p. G1, retrieved 2011-02-11
  8. ^ Neale, Brian (25 October 1998), "Field Museum Turns Biker Garage For Art Of The Motorcycle Exhibit", Chicago Tribune, p. 1, retrieved 2011-02-11
  9. ISBN 0-89207-207-5
  10. ^ a b c Schafer, Louis (March 1985), "In the Beginning", American Motorcyclist, American Motorcyclist Association, pp. 42–43, retrieved 2011-01-29
  11. ^
    ISBN 978-0-470-24587-3
  12. ISBN 0-600-60036-X
  13. ^
    ISBN 0-8018-8530-2
    , retrieved 2011-02-10
  14. ^
    ISSN 1073-9408
  15. ISBN 1-84038-898-6
  16. ^ "motorcycle, n.". Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford University Press. March 2009. 1. A two-wheeled motor-driven road vehicle, resembling a bicycle but powered by an internal-combustion engine; (now) spec. one with an engine capacity, top speed, or weight greater than that of a moped.
  17. ISBN 0-19-518951-5
  18. ISBN 0-600-34407-X
  19. G.N. Georgano
    Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886–1930 (London: Grange-Universal, 1985), p.26.
  20. ^ Motrice pia 1882, Museo Nicolis, 2009, archived from the original on October 31, 2010
  21. ^ "Bernardi Enrico, 1882, Einzylinder-Kraftmaschine Pia. - Museo Nicolis". 4 February 2016.
  22. ^ "The Hindu : Gottlieb Daimler (1834–1900): Pioneer in automobile engineering". www.thehindu.com. Archived from the original on 4 January 2017. Retrieved 27 January 2022.
  23. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2016-11-15. Retrieved 2016-07-04.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  24. ^ "App". Archived from the original on 2016-07-04. Retrieved 2016-07-04.
  25. ^ "Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach and the "Grandfather Clock"".
  26. ^ The Automobile (Volume XXVI ed.). The Class Journal Company. May 30, 1912. p. 1237. Harking Back a Decade From The Motor Review, May 29, 1902: Gottlieb Daimler, father of the automobile industry, is honored by the present production of Daimler vehicles in practically every branch of the trade- In Europe no class of automobile building is without a Daimler. The Daimler engine stands out prominently as a representative of a type using the hot tube system of ignition. The company clung to this system despite the fact that many others have adopted electrical ignition.
  27. ISBN 0-393-31809-5
  28. ^
    ISBN 0-85112-200-0
  29. ISBN 0-7680-0800-X
    , retrieved 2011-02-12
  30. ^ DE patent 34926, Gottlieb Daimler, "Gas – bezw. Petroleum-Kraftmaschine", issued 1885-04-03 
  31. ^ Johnson, Paul F., Roper steam velocipede, Smithsonian Institution, retrieved 2011-02-06
  32. ISSN 0011-4286
  33. ^
    ISSN 0277-9358
    , retrieved 2011-02-09
  34. ^ "Mercedes-Benz Classic: November 1885: Daimler riding car travels from Cannstatt to Untertürkheim". Daimler. 25 October 2010.
  35. ^ DE patent 36423, Gottlieb Daimler, "Fahrzeug mit gas bezw. Petroleum Kraftmaschine", issued 1885-11-29 
  36. YouTube
    (narration in German)
  37. ^
    ISSN 0277-9358
    , retrieved 2011-02-09
  38. ^ "1885 / Daimler Reitrad (Replica)", Honda Collection Hall, Honda, 2010, retrieved 2011-02-11
  39. ^ Deeley Motorcycle Exhibition Employee (2017), Rizwaan Abbas
  40. ^ "Historic labour of love", The Courier-Mail, October 28, 2008, retrieved 2011-02-07

External links

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