Nikolaus August Otto was the German Engineer who has created the first engine of internal combustion that uses the cycle of four strokes to efficiently burn the fuel directly in the chamber piston. Otto was the first person to make the practical of the concept of four strokes with the help of a mixture of vital compression which was patented by Alphonse Beau de Rochas in 1861 but they could not be made in practise.
Background
He was born on 10th July 1832, Nassau Holzhausen an der Haide and died on 26 January 1891, Cologne.
Nikolaus August Otto’s father was a farmer and a local post office worker. Otto's father died soon after he was born.
Otto's older brother named Wilhelm owned a business of textile in Cologne and also helped Otto a lot in getting a job as a sales representative and after that period of time.
Education
Otto's mother dedicated herself to his future and sent him early to the school. She also encouraged him for the technical education and always gave him a great motivation for his success. Otto finnished the high school and indulged as a clerk in the grocery shop of Frankfurt city. He then served as an internship in commerce and following his internship worked as a businessman in Cologne and Frankfurt city. He had no further formal education.
In 1864, Otto again met engineer named was Eugen Langen who saw his potential and gave him technical lessons which later allowed Otto in his invention.
Career
Nikolaus August Otto started selling off the sugar, tea and as well as many products that are related to kitchenware at the border of Western Germany to the grocery stores. He quit his job when he was relocated to Cologne as he wanted to design the small gas engines to improve the existing importance of the person named Etienne Lenoir.
Later, together with Eugen Langen he founded the engine factory named NA Otto & Cie. At Paris World Exhibition in 1867, the engine that they developed gained a huge success and was awarded a big Grand Prize. The Langen and Otto engine were the engines of free piston atmospheric (the gas explosion was mostly used for creating a vacuum and the main power that comes from the atmospheric pressure actually returns to the piston).
Langen was the person who bought the cash in a relationship and Otto bought the expertise and then began to search for the work of improving the engine manufacturers to build it in a factory part. After an effort of three years, they were standing with the much improved developed engine and its bore resemble with the Otto’s early prototypes and Lenoir engine. When they decided to present their engine in the exhibition in Paris in 1867, it was a big disaster and at the first time most of the judges ignored it because of its style. However when they convinced and showed the capability of the engine like it was the engine that consumes less than the half of the energy as compared to other engines. It was a great shock for every person who was present there and after that big success, it was awarded a Gold medal. The result of the exhibition was best and there was the huge publicity demand for their engine that they were not able to complete due to the capitalization issue, then for resolving this they entered into a partnership with a businessman named Ludwig August Roosen-Runge from Hamburg and in march 1869, the company became Otto, Langen and Roosen and the company moved to the suburb of Deutz in Cologne. Ludwig August Roosen-Runge helped them a lot for capital, but still the demand was outstripped supply.
Then the Langen convinced his brothers and his brother’s partners to invest in their business as their investment was 13 times more than the investment done by Ludwig August Roosen-Runge and again it was launched by a new company named Gasmotoren Fabric Deutz AG which was named in 1872 in January. Otto never invested in the company so he didn't get any share from the company, but instead, he accepted the contract of long-term employment. Lange was firstly trained as a gunsmith before the profession of engineering and has many years of experience in the factories across the Europe.
By 1875 the company producing 634 engines a year but the engine had hit a technical dead end: it produced only 3 hp yet required 3–4 m headroom to operate.
Otto later turned his attention to the 4-stroke cycle. This was largely due to the efforts of Franz Rings and Herman Schumm, brought into the company by Gottlieb Daimler. It is this engine (the Otto Silent Engine), and not the Otto & Langen engine, to which the Otto cycle refers. This was the first commercially successful engine to use in-cylinder compression. The Rings-Schumm engine appeared in autumn 1876 and was immediately successful - until 1889 the sales of the new engine were at 8300 an average annualy.
Connections
Otto married Anna Gossi and the couple had seven recorded children. His son Gustav Otto grew up to become an aircraft builder.