- Home »
- Nicolaus Otto
Windows 8 UI > Desgined By. Renadel Dapize
Fitrah Izul Falaq
On Sunday 3 February 2013
Nicolaus Otto was born on June 14, 1832 in
Holzhausen, Germany. Otto's first occupation was as a traveling salesman
selling tea, coffee, and sugar. He soon developed an interest in the new
technologies of the day and began experimenting with building four-stroke
engines (inspired by Lenoir's two-stroke gas-driven internal combustion
engine). After meeting Eugen Langen, a technician and owner of a sugar factory,
Otto quit his job, and in 1864, the duo started the world's first engine
manufacturing company N.A. Otto & Cie (now DEUTZ AG, Köln). In 1867, the
pair were awarded a Gold Medal at the Paris World Exhibition for their
atmospheric gas engine built a year earlier.
In May 1876, Nicolaus Otto built the first practical
four-stroke piston cycle internal combustion engine. He continued to develop
his four-stroke engine after 1876 and he considered his work finished after his
invention of the first magneto ignition system for low voltage ignition in
1884. Otto's patent (see drawing below) was overturned in 1886 in favor of the
patent granted to Alphonse Beau de Roaches for his four-stroke engine. However,
Otto built a working engine while Roaches' design stayed on paper. On October
23, 1877, another patent for a gas-motor engine was issued to Nicolaus Otto,
and Francis and William Crossley.
Nicolaus Otto died at age 59, on January 26, 1891,
in Cologne.