To celebrate International Women’s Day, we have the story of Bertha Benz, who was the first person to take a long-distance drive at the beginning of automobile history, just because she wanted to visit her family.
Beginnings are important, and German engineer Carl Benz was the one who practically invented the modern car, a very long time ago, back in the 1880s. And his wife was the first to take it out for a long-distance drive.
Let’s go even further back. Bertha Ringer Benz was born in 1849 into a rich family in Pforzheim, Germany. However, that was an age when women were denied access to higher education, despite her eagerness to learn how things functioned.
She got the famous “Benz” surname after she married Carl Benz in 1872. She met him during a coach excursion organized by the Eintracht club on June 27, 1869. She knew she wanted to marry him the moment he brought up the subject of a horseless carriage he was working on. Together, they were the ones who started it all and changed the face of transportation forever.
Bertha helped finance the development of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, completed in 1886.
She started on a historical journey, in the early hours of an August day in 1888. Bertha took her two elder sons, Richard and Eugene, leaving two little girls at home, with their father. Her husband had no idea that she was going on the first long-distance journey with the Benz Patent Motorwagen.
She wanted to go visit her parents, and she didn’t let the unsuitable roads stop her from achieving her goals. She found a solution for every problem, resorting to a garter, a hatpin, and other improvisations along the way. She didn’t stop even when she ran out of fuel outside Wiesloch, and the Motorwagen had to be pushed for several kilometers. One of her stops was at a pharmacy for ligroin, a petroleum solvent that would put the horseless carriage in motion again. That pharmacy is now considered to be the world's first gas station.
The “car” she used from her home in Mannheim to Pforzheim, where her mother lived, was the revised version, Model III, which had 2.5 horsepower, and was able to reach 40 kph (24.8 mph). Her journey was of 106 km (66 miles) long and it took her 12 hours to get there.
In 2016, Bertha Benz was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame, 32 years after her husband, and in 2019, Mercedes-Benz also created a short movie on her journey, focusing on her quick wit and decision-making when she encountered issues on her way.
Imagine a Wenn diagram for cars and celebrities. At the intersection you'll find Monica, putting her passion for these fields and English-Spanish double major to work. She's been doing for the past seven years, most recently at autoevolution. Full profile
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