On this day in 1834, automaker Gottlieb Daimler was born. The Daimler automobile and engine company would later make automobiles under the Mercedes-Benz brand – Daimler’s business partner Wilhelm Maybach designed the first Mercedes. Eventually the brand passed through several other companies’ hands before ending up associated with Fiat and Chrysler today.

Gottleib Daimler started his career as a gunsmith. Afterward, he became a mechanical engineer and began to work on an internal-combustion engine, along with his business partner Maybach. The four-stroke engine was first attached to a bicycle, then to a carriage in 1886. Daimler died in 1900, at the age of 65.