Nothing is more to be desired than that Germany may have good historians; they alone can make foreigners care more about us, says Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, adding: "But I would like to know to what extent the German is now capable of such history; I express my opinion with some fear. The true professor is the man who is least capable of becoming a great historian." A working group for the history of German internal combustion engine manufacturing, which was formed in early 1951 from representatives of the first German engine factories, believed they should not heed Lichtenberg's warning. They assigned a professor the task of describing in a historical work the contribution that Germany made to the development of the internal combustion engine.