1909 - 1984 Motorenbau in Friedrichshafen
For our short-lived present, 75 or 50 years is a remarkably long time. At the beginning of the century, motorization made only slow progress, but in the 1930s it was only a matter of hours of flight to get overseas, and in 1969, we landed on the moon.
In 1969, companies were also united in a group that is now commemorating its 50th and 75th anniversaries.
50 years ago, in 1934, the predecessor of today's MTU Munich, BMW Flugmotorenbau GmbH, was founded in Munich.
75 years ago, in 1909, Luftfahrzeug-Motorenbau GmbH, Bissingen an der Enz, was entered into the commercial register, from which, after several stages, today's MTU Friedrichshafen emerged.
The owners have changed, and the products and the way they are manufactured can no longer be compared with those of the founding years. We have decided to celebrate these anniversaries of both companies because we are using them as an opportunity to present today's MTU Group with its historical and technical background and to present it as part of a technical development process that has shaped the last 100 years like never before.
This also goes beyond the framework set by the anniversary dates, 50 and 75 years, and includes all the historical and current events of the MTU companies, the predecessor companies and the companies whose technical heritage continues to have an impact on MTU today. The anniversary publications therefore do not exclusively follow the narrow lines of the foundings and their reorganizations, new names and the sale of shares or entire companies. We wanted to show technical developments that influenced each other, whose experiences in development, production and support run like a common thread through MTU's current activities and which are independent of the name of the company, its owners and its location.
The technical history of MTU Friedrichshafen shows how the high-speed, high-performance diesel engine built there today also came about in the technical environment of Benz, Daimler, Diesel and Maybach, and how the interactions between aviation, shipping, road traffic and rail traction gave rise to this modern drive technology.
And so the tradition of MTU Munich is interwoven with many developments in aircraft engine construction, from the first airship engines from Daimler and Maybach, to the first jet engines built and flown in the world by BMW, to today's modern civil and military aircraft engines.
If these two documents from the tradition of MTU Munich and MTU Friedrichshafen can convey a little of this impression, then they have fulfilled their task. We would like to thank everyone who was directly or indirectly involved in the creation of these documents. MTU Motoren- und Turbinen-Union companies Munich and Friedrichshafen
The management
Gottlieb Daimler
Wilhelm Maybach
Carl Benz
Rudolf Diesel
Engines have changed the world; they determine people's lives and the pace of our age as indispensable pack animals and cab horses of industrial progress. Engines are a matter of course in modern everyday life, as if they had always been there. And yet they are the offspring of a technical revolution that opened up new dimensions around the middle of the last century.
It was the year 1883 when Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach built the first light, high-speed four-stroke engine in a converted greenhouse on Taubenheimstrasse in Cannstatt and triggered a development that was to give decisive impulses to 20th century transport technology on land, water and in the air.
Wilhelm Maybach and Gottlieb Daimler met for the first time in 1865 in the machine factory of the Reutlingen Brothers' House. Maybach had trained and worked there as a technical draftsman, while Daimler had been commissioned to manage and modernize the manufacturing plant. Maybach became a brilliant designer who would remain a team with the outstanding organizer Gottlieb Daimler. In 1869, both moved to the Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft Karlsruhe, and three years later to the Gasmotoren-Fabrik Deutz AG, whose founders, Nicolaus August Otto and Eugen Langen, had caused a great stir with their atmospheric gas engine at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867 and received a gold medal. Maybach's first task at Deutz in 1872 was to improve this machine. He also investigated the use of liquid fuels. In the mid-1870s, Maybach developed a "petrol machine", the first operationally viable gasoline engine. Nicolaus August Otto caused the sensation of 1876 with his four-stroke engine. The "Otto engine" named after him is still the original principle of the internal combustion engine and the basis for engine construction. When Gottlieb Daimler left Deutz in 1882 and set up his own business in Cannstatt, he was followed by Wilhelm Maybach, who had recently been working in Deutz on redesigning the design of the Otto engine. In the greenhouse behind Daimler's villa, they began to create a light, high-speed Otto engine that, unlike the previous, unwieldy stationary engines, could be installed in vehicles.