(1832-1891) German engineer who in 1876 patented an effective internal-combustion engine.
Otto was born in Holzhausen, Nassau. In 1861 he built a small experimental gas engine, and three years later, with two others, formed a company to market such engines. At the Paris Exhibition of 1867 the firm's product won a gold medal in competition with 14 other gas engines. A new factory, the Gasmotorenfabrik, was built at Deutz near Cologne in 1869. Otto concentrated on the administrative side of the business, and in 1872 Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach joined on the engineering side.
Otto first designed a successful vertical atmospheric gas engine in 1867. In 1876, he described the four-stroke engine. His patent was invalidated 1886 when his competitors discovered that Alphonse Beau de Rochas (1815-1893) had described the principle of the four-stroke cycle in an obscure pamphlet, but Otto is believed to have reached his results independently of Rochas. + prikaži više