The history of Mercedes Benz (Daimler Benz), now Daimler Chrysler, is long and storied. Its scope and depth cannot fully be covered in the space allotted here. However, by tracing some of the significant aspects of the company throughout its history, one gets a taste of the significance of the company basically responsible for the production of the world’s first automobiles. Three inventors were basically responsible for what would become the Mercedes Benz company, Karl Benz, Wilhelm Maybach, and Gottlieb Daimler. The automobile manufactured by Daimler Benz did not spring to life fully made, like oatmeal from a box of instant mix. Instead there were developments which preceded its invention, perhaps most important among them the invention of the first fast-running internal combustion engine. In 1883 Benz and Co. was founded, the same year that Gottlieb Daimler protects his “Gas Engine with Hot Tube Ignition” and the “Regulation of Speed of the Engine through Control of the Exhaust Valve” inventions with patents. The two inventions together basically for the basis for the first internal combustion engine (Steinwedel 1).
Less than sixty miles away from Daimler, Karl Benz was simultaneously working on building the automobile through the use of internal combustion engines. Daimler was a master engineer whose philosophy that “each new car should be technically superior to its predecessor” was reinforced by his association with another brilliant engineer, Wilhelm Maybach (Steinwedel 2). Although the hot tube ignition invented by Daimler would be far inferior to the electric ignition, it represented a significant feature of the new internal combustion engine. By the end of the 1880s, Daimler had gone from being a disgruntled employee of the Deutz Motor Works to the head of the new Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft.
Daimler’s biggest rival was Benz und Cie; Rheinische Gasmotorenfabrik. Benz had perfected the two-...