In 1900, in addition to using the device on motor vehicles, the Bosch magneto ignition was used in the Daimler engines on the Zeppelin.

In 1899, they entered the French market as the Automatic Magneto Electric Ignition Company, Ltd.[1]: 112 The first sales office and the first factory in the U.S. were opened in 1906 and 1910 respectively.

In rapid succession in the years following the First World War, Bosch launched innovations for the motor vehicle, including diesel fuel injection in 1927.

In the 1920s the global economic crisis caused Bosch to begin a rigorous program of modernization and diversification in his company.

In only a few years' time, he succeeded in turning his company from a small automotive supplier into a multinational electronics group.

Instead, he donated several million German marks to charitable causes, including to the establishment of Stuttgart's Robert Bosch Hospital in 1940.

[5] He hoped this reconciliation would bring about lasting peace in Europe and lead to the creation of a European economic area.

The Bosch company accepted armaments contracts and employed an estimated 20,000 slaves (including some 1200 concentration camp inmates who were "brutally abused at the Langenbielau plant") during the war.

[6] Meanwhile, Bosch secretly supported the resistance against Adolf Hitler, and together with his closest associates saved victims of Nazi persecution from deportation.

[7] On his eightieth birthday, Bosch was awarded the title "Pionier der Arbeit" (Pioneer of Labor) by Hitler[8] and when he died a year later, he was afforded a state funeral by the Third Reich.