Despite a lack of technical training, Nikolaus August Otto (1832-1891) had the ingenuity to make the first practical internal combustion engine. He later devised the four-stroke engine, known as the Otto cycle, which was widely used for automobile and other motors.

Nikolaus Otto was born in Holzhausen auf der Heide, a small village on the Rhine River in Germany. Although his father, the village postmaster, died soon after Otto was born, his mother raised him well. Young Otto excelled in school, and his mother planned for him to continue with a technical education, but the failed German revolution in 1848 and declining economic conditions made his mother believe that he would be better off as a merchant.

Otto left high school and got a job as a clerk in a grocery store. He soon was working as a clerk in the nearby city of Frankfurt. His older brother Wilhelm...