Otto engine
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Developed the 2-stroke engine, in partnership with Eugen Langen, that won the Gold Medal at the 1867 Paris Exposition
Founded Otto & Cie. in 1863 – now known as Klocker-Humboldt-Deutz, the world’s oldest manufacturer of internal combustion engines
Built and patented the 4-stroke engine in 1877
The automobile was only a distant dream when self-taught engineer Nikolaus Otto developed the engine that eventually made cars a reality. As a boy in Germany, Otto showed engineering promise, but his widowed mother was unable to afford a technicial education. Following his natural talent, Otto became intrigued with the existing Lenoir 2-stroke engine and began experimenting with it. Otto’s ideas attracted the attention of Eugen Langen and the two formed the company, Otto & Cie. With Otto providing technological innovation and Langen acting as business manager, they produced their award-winning 2-stroke engine. Otto then developed and patented a 4-stroke engine that became known for its reliability, efficiency and quietness. Some 30,000 of th
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Nicolaus August Otto
Engineer Nicolaus August Otto invented the first practical alternative to the steam engine. Born in Holzhausen, Germany, Otto built his first gas engine in 1861. Then, in partnership with German industrialist Eugen Langen, they improved the design and won a gold medal at the Paris Exposition of 1867. In 1876, Otto, then a traveling salesman, chanced upon a newspaper account of the Lenoir internal combustion engine.
Before year's end, Otto had built an internal combustion engine, utilizing a four-stroke piston cycle. Now called the "Otto cycle" in his honor, the design called for four strokes of a piston to draw in and compress a gas-air mixture within a cylinder resulting in an internal explosion.
Although an earlier patent by French engineer Alphonse de Rochas was found, Otto built the first practical and successful four-stroke cycle engine. Because of its reliability, efficiency, and relative quiet, more than 30,000 Otto cycle engines were built in the next ten years.
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Nikolaus August Otto Biography (1832-1891)
- Nationality
- German
- Gender
- Male
- Occupation
- engineer
Otto, born at Holzhausen, Hesse-Nassau, was the son of a farmer. Otto left school at 16, and later moved to Cologne where he became fascinated by the gasengines developed by Frenchman Jean-Joseph-Étienne Lenoir and displayed for the first time in 1859. Lenoir's engines had a two-stroke design and burned coal (or illuminating) gas; they were also notoriously inefficient. Nevertheless, in 1861, Otto built an experimental engine based on Lenoir's design. Three years later, he joined forces with industrialist Eugen Langen and together they formed the Gasmotorenfabric Company with its factory at Deutz nearCologne to build and market his engines. Otto and Langen had the able assistance of Franz Reuleaux, Gottlieb Daimler, and Wilhelm Maybach as part of their engineering team.
In 1867, Otto and Langen announced their first production engine--a noisy two-stroke engine that improved upon the Lenoir design by compressing the gas before it was ignited. This new Otto engine was a commercial
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