In 1876 one of the automobiles industries pioneers invented an effective gas motor engine. Nicolaus Otto had a big impact in the foundation for the modern engine. He built the first practical four-stroke internal combustion engine called the "Otto Cycle Engine," which he then built onto a wooden bike along with Gottlieb Daimler creating the first motorcycle.

Nicolaus August Otto was born on June 14, 1832 in Holzhausen, Germany. At the age of sixteen, Otto dropped out of high school and worked in a grocery store for a while and also worked as a clerk in Frankfurt. His first occupation was as a traveling salesman selling sugar, kitchenware and tea to grocery stores on the German side of the Belgian and the French border as he was trying to make enough money to wed his beloved Ann, whom he met at a carnival in Cologne in 1858, when he was 26.

As a young boy Nicolaus had a fascination for things mechanical and soon developed an interest in the new technologies of the day. He began experimenting with building four-stroke engines after coming across a newspaper article of the Lenoir two-stroke gas-driven internal combustion engine.

Otto built an internal combustion engine before year's end and would invent the first practical alternative to the steam engine.

Although Otto's early attempts at building a combustion engine failed, they so impressed Eugen Langen, a technician and proprietor of a sugar factory, who took on Otto as a partner. Nicolaus quit his job and joined Eugen Lengen and in 1864, the two of them started the world's first engine manufacturing company 'N.A. Otto & Cie'

The company exists today as Klockner-Humbolt-Deutz AG and is the oldest company manufacturing internal combustion engines and the world’s largest manufacturer of air-cooled diesel engines.

In 1867, the pair were awarded a Gold Medal at the Paris World Exhibition for their atmospheric gas engine built a year earlier. Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach later joined the company.

"In his youthful enthusiasm he thought of this day and night," wrote Kurt Rathke in his biography of Otto. "He had the wildest plans about the future, all to do with the gas engine and its possibilities."

According to Rathke, Otto was inspired by watching smoke rise from a chimney. "He decided that the place of explosion in a gas engine, which he likened to the chimney, should receive a rich fuel mixture. His idea was to let only fresh air enter first and fall down on unburned gases from the previous working stroke. Only then should the gas mixture be inducted."

Although Lenoir built the first commercially practical internal combustion engine in 1859, the Lenoir engine failed to come up to initial expectations and fell suddenly from popularity.

This was due, partly to the troublesome electrical ignition system, but mainly to the high consumption of, what was then, expensive gas (and what's different from today?). In practice almost 100 cubic feet of gas were burnt per horsepower per hour.

The amount of cooling water needed was considerable and the heat generated was so great, that unless the bearings were heavily oiled, the engine would seize.

Otto felt that the Lenoir engine would have more uses if it could run on liquid fuel so he devised a carburetor for this engine and worked to improve it in other ways.

Although two years later, Alphonse Beau de Rochas set forth the principle of the four-stroke engine, one of the most important landmarks in engine design comes from Nicolaus Otto, who in 1876 invented an effective gas motor engine.

Nicolaus built the first practical four-stroke internal combustion engine with ignition device, calling it the "Otto Cycle Engine". In 1861, Otto patented a two-stroke engine that ran on gas and in the next ten years, over 30,000 of the engine were sold. This engine was the prototype of the combustion engines that have since been built.

How the four-stroke Engine worked

On its first stroke the piston would draw in an explosive mixture of fuel and air. The second, return stroke would compress the mixture. Ignition would then explode the charge, the resulting expansion driving the piston for its third stroke. The final stroke would exhaust the burnt gases, clearing the cylinder to start the cycle again.

A very smart Otto patented his construction in 1877. And although he never became directly involved in car manufacturing, his compressed-charge engine marked the beginning of an era of pioneering and was the foundation of the modern 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 was overturned however in 1886 in favor of the patent granted to Alphonse Beau de Roaches for his four-stroke engine.

But an undaunted Otto built a working engine while Roaches' design stayed on paper. So on October 23, 1877, another patent for a gas-motor engine was issued to Nicolaus Otto, and Francis and William Crossley.

Gottlieb Daimler constructed a very light engine, using Otto’s model and attached one of them to a bicycle making the world’s first motorcycle. Daimler also constructed an automobile, using Otto’s engine.

Karl Benz also built his fist three-wheel automobile employing Otto’s engine and the firms of Daimler and Benz merged and manufactured the famous Mercedes-Benz vehicles.

Otto’s practical internal combustion engine is used to power automobiles, motorcycles and motorboats. Also, the Diesel engine is a form of internal combustion engine, which employs a four-stroke cycle that is similar to Otto’s.

Nicolaus August Otto died at age 59 on January 26, 1891 in Cologne.