2015 is the 130 year anniversary of Gottlieb Daimler’s 1885 patent on the use of a supercharger on an internal combustion engine. Daimler recognized the Roots blower, or supercharger, developed for blast furnaces and other state of the art industrial applications could boost the performance of his engines. His invention was made just a few years after departing his work with Nikolaus Otto, the famous inventor of the four stroke engine. His partner in his new venture is someone whose name is also famous in automotive circles – Wilhelm Maybach. Maybach and Daimler’s first engine, with 264 cc displacement, produced 0.5 HP. By 1921 the first series-produced cars with roots blower as superchargers were being sold by Mercedes (Kompressor, further developed by Ferdinand Porsche while working for Mercedes) and were producing horsepower in the mid double-digits! Our beloved MINI Cooper S with its positive displacement forced induction Roots blower and four vertically aligned cylinders can trace its lineage back to those early Kompressor engines almost 100 years ago.
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