Daimler Reitwagen
Encyclopedia
The Daimler Reitwagen or Einspur ("single track") was a motor vehicle
made by Gottlieb Daimler
and Wilhelm Maybach
in 1885, and is widely recognized as the first motorcycle
. Daimler is often called "the father of the motorcycle" for this invention. Even when the three steam powered
two wheelers that preceded the Reitwagen, the Michaux-Perreaux
and Roper
of 1867–1869, and the 1884 Copeland, are considered motorcycles, it remains nonetheless the first gasoline
internal combustion motorcycle, and the forerunner of all vehicles, land, sea and air, that use its overwhelmingly popular engine type.
uses this criterion. The use of four wheels instead of two also raises doubts. Even if the outriggers are understood only as auxiliary stabilizers, they point to a deeper issue in bicycle and motorcycle dynamics
, in that Daimler's test bed needed the training wheels because it did not employ the principles, well understood in 1884, of rake and trail. 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called the Daimler-Maybach "a crude makeshift", saying that "as a bicycle, it was 20 years out of date." 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."
, 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. Daimler had founded an experimental workshop in the garden shed behind his house in Cannstatt district of Stuttgart in 1882. Together with his employee Maybach they developed a compact, high-speed single-cylinder engine, patented on April 3, 1885 and called "grandfather clock engine." It had a float metered carburetor
, used mushroom intake valves
which were opened by the suction of the piston's intake stroke, and instead of an electrical ignition system
, it used hot tube ignition
, a platinum tube running into the combustion chamber, heated by an external open flame. It could also run on coal gas
. It used twin flywheels and had an aluminum crankcase.
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. 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. The original design of 1884 used a belt drive, and 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. Roper's velocipede of the late 1860s used a similar two way twistgrip handlebar control. 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. The design was patented on August 29, 1885.
It had a 264 cc 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. Its engine output of 0.5 hp at 600 rpm gave it a speed of about 7 miles per hour (3.1 m/s). Daimler's 17-year-old son, Paul, rode it first on November 18, 1885, going 5–12 km (3.1–7.5 ), from Cannstatt to Untertürkheim in Stuttgart
, Germany. The seat caught fire on that excursion, the engine's hot tube ignition being located directly underneath. 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. By 1886 the Reitwagen had served its purpose and was abandoned in favor of further development on four wheeled vehicles.
in Stuttgart, the Deutsches Museum
in Munich, the Honda Collection Hall at the Twin Ring Motegi
facility in Japan, the AMA
Motorcycle Hall of Fame
in Ohio, and in Melbourne
, Australia. The Deutsches Museum lent their replica to the Guggenheim Las Vegas The Art of the Motorcycle
exhibition in 2001. 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 throttle and steering linkage seen in the 1884 plans, while the Deutsches Museum's replica has the simple handlebar, as well as the ring gear on the rear wheel.
Motor vehicle
A motor vehicle or road vehicle is a self-propelled wheeled vehicle that does not operate on rails, such as trains or trolleys. The vehicle propulsion is provided by an engine or motor, usually by an internal combustion engine, or an electric motor, or some combination of the two, such as hybrid...
made by Gottlieb Daimler
Gottlieb Daimler
Gottlieb Daimler was an engineer, industrial designer and industrialist born in Schorndorf , in what is now Germany. He was a pioneer of internal-combustion engines and automobile development...
and Wilhelm Maybach
Wilhelm Maybach
Wilhelm Maybach was an early German engine designer and industrialist. During the 1890s he was hailed in France, then the world centre for car production, as the "King of constructors"....
in 1885, and is widely recognized as the first motorcycle
Motorcycle
A motorcycle is a single-track, two-wheeled motor vehicle. Motorcycles vary considerably depending on the task for which they are designed, such as long distance travel, navigating congested urban traffic, cruising, sport and racing, or off-road conditions.Motorcycles are one of the most...
. Daimler is often called "the father of the motorcycle" for this invention. Even when the three steam powered
Steam engine
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be...
two wheelers that preceded the Reitwagen, the Michaux-Perreaux
Michaux-Perreaux steam velocipede
The Michaux-Perreaux steam velocipede was a steam powered velocipede made in France sometime from 1867 to 1871, when a small Louis-Guillaume Perreaux commercial steam engine was attached to a Pierre Michaux manufactured iron framed pedal bicycle...
and Roper
Roper steam velocipede
The Roper steam velocipede was a steam-powered velocipede built by inventor Sylvester H. Roper of Roxbury, Boston, Massachusetts, United States sometime from 1867–1869. It is one of three machines which have been called the first motorcycle, along with the Michaux-Perreaux steam velocipede,...
of 1867–1869, and the 1884 Copeland, are considered motorcycles, it remains nonetheless the first gasoline
Gasoline
Gasoline , or petrol , is a toxic, translucent, petroleum-derived liquid that is primarily used as a fuel in internal combustion engines. It consists mostly of organic compounds obtained by the fractional distillation of petroleum, enhanced with a variety of additives. Some gasolines also contain...
internal combustion motorcycle, and the forerunner of all vehicles, land, sea and air, that use its overwhelmingly popular engine type.
First motorcycle?
The Reitwagens status as the first motorcycle rests on whether the definition of motorcycle includes having an internal combustion engine. The Oxford English DictionaryOxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
uses this criterion. The use of four wheels instead of two also raises doubts. Even if the outriggers are understood only as auxiliary stabilizers, they point to a deeper issue in bicycle and motorcycle dynamics
Bicycle and motorcycle dynamics
Bicycle and motorcycle dynamics is the science of the motion of bicycles and motorcycles and their components, due to the forces acting on them. Dynamics is a branch of classical mechanics, which in turn is a branch of physics. Bike motions of interest include balancing, steering, braking,...
, in that Daimler's test bed needed the training wheels because it did not employ the principles, well understood in 1884, of rake and trail. For this and other reasons motoring author David Burgess-Wise
David Burgess-Wise
David Burgess-Wise is a motoring author, enthusiast, and automobile historian. A motoring writer since 1960, he has written some 25 books on motoring history. He also edits the award-winning Aston, journal of the Aston Martin Heritage Trust.-See Also:...
called the Daimler-Maybach "a crude makeshift", saying that "as a bicycle, it was 20 years out of date." Cycle World
Cycle World
Cycle World is a motorcycling magazine in the United States. It was founded in 1962 by Joe Parkhurst, who was inducted to the Motorcycle Hall of Fame as "the person responsible for bringing a new era of objective journalism" to the U.S. and is now the largest motorcycling magazine in the 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."
Development
"The first motorcycle looks like an instrument of torture", wrote Melissa Holbrook PiersonMelissa Holbrook Pierson
Melissa Holbrook Pierson, born in Akron, Ohio, is a writer and essayist of non-fiction. She is a life-long motorcycle enthusiast and this is reflected in many of her books...
, 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. Daimler had founded an experimental workshop in the garden shed behind his house in Cannstatt district of Stuttgart in 1882. Together with his employee Maybach they developed a compact, high-speed single-cylinder engine, patented on April 3, 1885 and called "grandfather clock engine." It had a float metered carburetor
Carburetor
A carburetor , carburettor, or carburetter is a device that blends air and fuel for an internal combustion engine. It is sometimes shortened to carb in North America and the United Kingdom....
, used mushroom intake valves
Poppet valve
A poppet valve is a valve consisting of a hole, usually round or oval, and a tapered plug, usually a disk shape on the end of a shaft also called a valve stem. The shaft guides the plug portion by sliding through a valve guide...
which were opened by the suction of the piston's intake stroke, and instead of an electrical ignition system
Ignition system
An ignition system is a system for igniting a fuel-air mixture. Ignition systems are well known in the field of internal combustion engines such as those used in petrol engines used to power the majority of motor vehicles, but they are also used in many other applications such as in oil-fired and...
, it used hot tube ignition
Hot-tube ignitor
A hot-tube ignitor was an early device that fit onto the cylinder head of an internal-combustion engine, used to ignite the compressed fuel/air mixture by means of a flame heating part of the tube red-hot...
, a platinum tube running into the combustion chamber, heated by an external open flame. It could also run on coal gas
Coal gas
Coal gas is a flammable gaseous fuel made by the destructive distillation of coal containing a variety of calorific gases including hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane and volatile hydrocarbons together with small quantities of non-calorific gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen...
. It used twin flywheels and had an aluminum crankcase.
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. 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. The original design of 1884 used a belt drive, and 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. Roper's velocipede of the late 1860s used a similar two way twistgrip handlebar control. 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. The design was patented on August 29, 1885.
It had a 264 cc single-cylinder Otto cycle
Otto cycle
An Otto cycle is an idealized thermodynamic cycle which describes the functioning of a typical reciprocating piston engine, the thermodynamic cycle most commonly found in automobile engines....
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. Its engine output of 0.5 hp at 600 rpm gave it a speed of about 7 miles per hour (3.1 m/s). Daimler's 17-year-old son, Paul, rode it first on November 18, 1885, going 5–12 km (3.1–7.5 ), from Cannstatt to Untertürkheim in Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, Germany. The seat caught fire on that excursion, the engine's hot tube ignition being located directly underneath. 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. By 1886 the Reitwagen had served its purpose and was abandoned in favor of further development on four wheeled vehicles.
Replicas
The original Reitwagen was destroyed in the Cannstatt Fire that razed the Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft Seelberg-Cannstatt plant in 1903, but several replicas exist in collections at the Mercedes-Benz MuseumMercedes-Benz Museum
The Mercedes-Benz Museum is an automotive museum housed in Stuttgart, Germany. Stuttgart is home to the Mercedes-Benz brand and the international headquarters of Daimler AG. The current building, which stands directly outside the main gate of the Daimler factory in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim, was...
in Stuttgart, the Deutsches Museum
Deutsches Museum
The Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of technology and science, with approximately 1.5 million visitors per year and about 28,000 exhibited objects from 50 fields of science and technology. The museum was founded on June 28, 1903, at a meeting of the Association...
in Munich, the Honda Collection Hall at the Twin Ring Motegi
Twin Ring Motegi
is an automobile racing track located at Motegi, Japan. Its name comes from the facility having two race tracks: a oval and a road course. It was built in 1997 by Honda, as part of Honda's effort to bring the IndyCar Series to Japan, helping to increase their knowledge of American open-wheel...
facility in Japan, the AMA
American Motorcyclist Association
The American Motorcyclist Association is an American not-for-profit organization of more than 300,000 motorcyclists that organizes numerous motorcycling activities and campaigns for motorcyclists' legal rights...
Motorcycle Hall of Fame
Motorcycle Hall of Fame
The Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum is an offshoot of the American Motorcyclist Association that recognizes individuals who have contributed to motorcycle sport, motorcycle construction and motorcycling in general. It displays motorcycles and riding gear and memoribilia. The museum is located in...
in Ohio, and in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Australia. The Deutsches Museum lent their replica to the Guggenheim Las Vegas The Art of the Motorcycle
The Art of the Motorcycle
The Art of the Motorcycle was an exhibition that presented 114 motorcycles chosen for their historic importance or design excellence in a display designed by Frank Gehry in the curved rotunda of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, running for three months...
exhibition in 2001. 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 throttle and steering linkage seen in the 1884 plans, while the Deutsches Museum's replica has the simple handlebar, as well as the ring gear on the rear wheel.