Gottlieb Daimler converted the garden house behind his villa just outside Stuttgart into a workshop and it was here that the world’s first internal-combustion engine began spinning in 1883. Daimler and his partner, Wilhelm Maybach, worked in such secrecy that a suspicious gardener, convinced his boss was a counterfeiter, summomed the police to the premises. Daimler was soon fitting his engine onto bikes and into coaches and moved his workshop to a nearby factory, where his mechanics perfected the automobiles that were eventually manufactured by Mercedes-Benz, one of the world’s most enduring luxury brands. Daimler’s covert workshop now houses drawings, photographs, and models of an airship and motorboat that he invented.