Germany: 1885 Gottlieb Daimler 1st Motorcycle

1885: First Gasoline Engine Motorcycle

​German Engineer, Inventor Gottlieb Daimler, First Gasoline Engine & Motorcycle
German mechanical engineer who was a major figure in the early history of the automotive industry, Gottlieb Daimler (born March 17, 1834, Schorndorf, Württemberg [Germany]—died March 6, 1900. In 1885 Daimler patented the first true gasoline engine "motorcycle." He is credited as pioneering building the world's first successful internal combustion engine (and, subsequently, the first automobile), staked his claim of priority in the two-wheeler world a year before developing his famous automobile.

History: Daimler attended technical drawing classes and in 1848 he began an apprenticeship as a gunmaker. In 1852 he completed this with his journeyman’s project, a double-barreled pistol. After a stay in France, where he gained practical experience in mechanical engineering, Daimler attended the Polytechnic College in Stuttgart from 1857 to 1859. At the end of 1863 he became the workshop inspector at the engineering factory of Bruderhaus Reutlingen, a Christian institution founded to give homes and work to the socially disadvantaged. On November 9, 1867 he married Emma Kurtz of Maulbronn.

• In 1872, he met Wilhelm Maybach, who became a lifelong collaborator and friend.
• By the end of 1883, they invented the high-speed internal combustion engine powered by gasoline.
• In 1884, they successfully invented another test engine known as the ‘grandfather clock’. 
• In 1885, Daimler designed the first motorcycle; he installed a gasoline engine with workable controls on a vehicle with two wheels and named it as ‘reitwagen’ or the ‘riding carriage’.
  
• In 1899 he was responsible for manufacturing the four-wheeled automobile. In 1899, the first Mercedes car was manufactured from his own set-up, the Daimler Company. ​More here