Eugen Langen

Eugen Langen was a German engineer and entrepreneur from Cologne who, after meeting Nicolaus Otto in 1864, financed and helped commercialize Otto's efforts to refine the gas engine earlier built by the inventor Etienne Lenoir. One month after that meeting Langen founded N. A. Otto and Cie, the world's first engine factory, and the improved engine the two men built there won the Grand Prize at the 1867 Paris World Exhibition. After that company went bankrupt, Langen founded a new firm, Gasmotoren-Fabrik Deutz, to continue manufacturing gas engines, and it eventually grew into the modern company Deutz AG. Beyond engines, Langen also patented a method for producing sugar cubes and co-founded the sugar refining company Pfeifer und Langen in 1870, which still operates today.