As with many inventions, when Karl Benz created the Motorwagen in the 1880s, it wasn’t a
design that came out of nowhere.
It was a product of innovation-evolution, simply the next iteration of a long line of
previous inventions.
Perhaps the first vision of a horseless, mechanical cart came from Leonardo da Vinci in 1479.
Titling it “Design for Spring-Driven Car or Horseless Wagon,” there’s no proof
he actually built it but his sketch looks like a spring-loaded tricycle.
A few hundred years later, steam engines were also used in attempts to replace the horse-drawn
carriage.
In 1769, Frenchman Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot constructed what is regarded as the first working self-propelled
vehicle intended for human travel.
Essentially a large steam-powered tricycle, its top speed was slower than a brisk walk
(about two miles an hour).
This doesn’t include the four or five times it needed to stop per hour for water refill
and to allow the steam pressure to build back up.
Needless to say, this was not practical.
Six decades later, Scotsman Robert Anderson put a non-rechargeable battery on a carriage
and it moved...albeit not very fast and for very long.
Fellow countryman Robert Davidson expanded on this innovation, creating a battery in
1841 that could propel a carriage to go 1.5 miles in less than thirty minutes.
Then, unfortunately, it needed a new battery.
While several advancements were made on the electric car front (see our videos: That Time
in 1899 When Ninety Percent of New York City’s Taxi Cabs Were Electric Vehicles and The First
Gas / Electric Hybrid, Built in 1900), for various reasons it wouldn't be until the 21st
century that we have finally gone full circle and started coming up with commercially viable
electric cars, with cars such as the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt, and Tesla Model S, Model
X, and Model 3, the last of which shares the name of the car we'll be discussing today.
This brings us to the internal combustion engine, which, much like the automobile, has
its own evolutionary history.
The first combustion engines didn't take advantage of any real internal compression and weren't
particularly powerful or practical.
In 1806, Swiss engineer François Isaac de Rivaz was the first to construct an internal
combustion engine that used hydrogen and oxygen.
More explosive, it did at least provide the germ of an idea for several other inventors
and their inventions, including Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir’s “Hippomobile.”
Considered the first successful horseless carriage powered by an internal combustible
engine, it was patented by Lenoir in 1860 and looks more ship-like than car.
American George Brayton was the first to develop a kerosene-fueled engine in 1873, but that
also didn’t provide enough power for a commercially viable automobile.
12 years later, Benz used these previous innovations to influence his own design for what is generally
considered the first "modern" automobile.
Born in the southwest German city of Karlsruhe in 1844, Karl Benz’s father died in a railway
accident when he was only two years old.
Despite being poor, his mother made sure his education got top priority, rather than sending
him off to work in some factory or the like as so many others in such situations had to
do.
Always a scientific-minded student who loved riding his bicycle (a relatively new invention
at the time), he entered the University of Karlsruhe at 15 years old.
He graduated in July 1864 and began seven long years working various jobs at mechanical
engineering companies.
Eventually he saved enough money to open his own iron construction business with a business
partner, August Ritter.
Almost immediately the company started going down the toilet, largely thanks to issues
with Ritter.
Benz was on the verge of bankruptcy when he met Bertha Ringer.
Ringer was the daughter of a wealthy family from the nearby German town of Pforzheim and
didn’t have a lot in common with Benz from a socioeconomic standpoint.
But she believed in him.
As Benz himself would later note in his memoirs, "Only one person remained with me in the small
ship of life when it seemed destined to sink.
That was my wife.
Bravely and resolutely she set the new sails of hope."
As an unmarried woman of privilege, she was awarded a rather large dowry that was to be
relinquished to her husband upon marriage in order that she might continue to lead her
accustomed affluent lifestyle - but until that time, it was hers to manage how she saw
fit.
Now, it is unclear how Karl and Bertha met, but it’s very evident that they had a special
relationship.
In 1870 - two years before they married - Bertha chose to invest a significant amount of her
dowry in Benz's business to help ensure his company’s financial survival.
While this kept the business afloat, unfortunately, due to various issues with other shareholders
and Benz' role in the company ultimately becoming marginalized, he was forced to leave this
business.
But thanks to the rest of Bertha's dowry, he was able to start a new company, Benz & Cie.
Now without interference from shareholders or business partners, Benz began working on
whatever pleased him.
And what pleased him was engineering several components that today are associated with
modern-day vehicles.
He then patented these devices and sold the patents to subsidize his other inventing.
These included patents for a throttle system, battery-powered ignition systems, spark plugs,
gear shifters, carburetors, the water radiator, and the clutch.
A commonly told legend has it that, looking for a distraction one day, Benz visited a
nearby bicycle shop to indulge his lifelong passion for the two wheeler.
He, instead, became inspired that day and went back into his shop and invented a new
type of human transportation device.
In truth, Benz, and many others, had long been seeking to create such a device and he
had devoted much of his professional life to inventing and improving upon the necessary
mechanisms to make such a vehicle possible.
It took several years of tinkering, but in January of 1886, he was able to patent his
“Motorwagen” - a three-wheeled vehicle with a one-cylinder, four-stroke gasoline
engine.
While others, such as Gottlieb Daimler, were independently working on essentially the same
thing with similar success, it was the Motorwagen that is credited as the world’s first practical,
commercially available, internal combustion engine powered automobile.
After completing the Motorwagen, Benz demonstrated it to the public, hoping to garner some sales,
or at least get someone interested in acquiring rights to the patent.
The demonstrations didn’t go so well, with one resulting in the driver crashing into
a wall and scaring onlookers.
Benz, who suffered from bouts of depression and extreme self-doubt, went back to his workshop
and continued to try to perfect his device.
Knowing her husband's lack of confidence and perfectionism all-to-well, and frightened
that his invention would end in the dustpan of history, Bertha decided to take matters
into her own hands.
It was in August of 1888 when Bertha decided to execute her plan.
Awaking early in the morning, she and two of her teen sons, Eugen and Richard, pushed
the so-called Motorwagen Model 3 out of her husband’s workshop and far enough away where
it could be started without waking him up.
The purpose of the little joyride she had planned was to visit her mother in Pforzheim,
65 miles away.
In the process, she hoped to drum up a considerable amount of publicity, doing something that
had never been tried before- taking an automobile on a road trip.
Bertha did not inform Karl of this adventure beforehand, but rather left him a note that
he discovered when he woke up.
Unfortunately for history buffs the world-over, exactly what this note said has been lost
to history.
The road to Pforzheim was certainly less-traveled, rocky and unpaved in many places.
Despite the driving conditions, Bertha was determined, driving and repairing the car
on the way.
She and her sons had to push the car up many of the hills (which later led her to suggest
that the Model 3 needed a lower gear as the 2.5 horsepower engine simply wasn't sufficient
for hill climbing).
She also had to stop for fuel at pharmacies that sold ligroin and was forced to make an
emergency repair to the car’s ignition using, of all things, her garter to insulate a shorted
wire.
When the fuel line became clogged, she identified the problem and cleared it with her hairpin.
When the drive chain broke, she found a blacksmith and instructed him on how to make the needed
repair.
When the wooden brakes began to crack in the face of sustained downhill usage, she came
up with the idea of putting leather on the wooden shoes- the world's first automobile
brake pads- finding a shoemaker to provide and attach leather soles for this function.
(Along with adding the extra gear and certain minor tweaks based on his wife's feedback,
this was another improvement Benz would immediately add to the Model 3's design upon Bertha's
return.)
At dusk, Bertha Benz arrived at her mother’s home, having made the 65 mile trip, repair
time included, in less than 12 hours.
All along the way, excited villagers and bystanders witnessed the marvel that was the Motorwagen
- sure, it wasn’t perfect, but it moved relatively fast and it was safe.
She sent a telegram to her husband to tell him of the successful journey, but he already
knew due to the significant publicity that echoed across the region thanks to her audacious
road trip.
Bertha had saved him before with her money- this time she did it with her gumption and
faith that his invention could do what no others like it had ever done.
After several days at her mother’s, Bertha and the boys returned home in the Motorwagen,
this time intentionally going in a different direction, impressing even more people with
the Model 3.
All in all, it was the world’s first automobile road trip- 120 miles in less than 24 hours
of driving, including repair and refueling time.
Prior to this, the only other known internal combustion automobiles hadn't managed more
than a mile, and often had to be returned by rail, pushed, or pulled by horses after
having broken down.
Directly after this well publicized road trip, orders started coming in for Benz' Motorwagen.
By the end of the century, Benz' company was producing hundreds of cars per year and was
the largest automobile manufacturer in the world.
While Karl Benz was a phenomenal engineer and visionary, history almost certainly only
remembers him, instead of so many others that were inventing virtually the same thing around
this same time, because of the constant financial support and later keen promotional sense of
his wife, Bertha Ringer Benz.
Once again, as the man himself said, "Only one person remained with me in the small ship
of life when it seemed destined to sink.
That was my wife.
Bravely and resolutely she set the new sails of hope."
Bonus Fact: Though the car itself is a fairly recent invention,
the first, albeit poorly documented, car accident supposedly happened about three centuries
ago, involving an auto-mobile of sorts invented by Frenchman, Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot in 1771.
Cugnot's, fardier à vapeur (steam dray), is likely the very first built and assembled
steam powered vehicle in history that could transport a human being, though it never actually
saw widespread use.
The story goes that some time in 1769 Cugnot showed French officials his prototype design
for a steam wagon capable of carrying cannons for the military; however, it wasn't until
1771 that Cugnot had a working prototype people could ride on.
Cugnot then reportedly invited several French officials to join him on the maiden voyage.
During the trip, the vehicle careened out of control and smashed into some unlucky person's
garden wall at a nail-biting 2MPH.
However, some historians question whether this event actually happened, due to scant
direct documented evidence.
To find a better documented accident, you actually need to travel 98 years into the
future to 1869.
On August 31st in the City of Birr in Ireland, Mary Ward, a scientist and writer had the
unfortunate privilege of becoming the first known person to be killed by an auto-mobile.
On that day, Mary and three companions were enjoying a trip on a steam powered carriage.
While in motion, the carriage hit a bump, throwing Mary from her seat and into the path
of one of the carriage's wheels where she was crushed and instantly killed.
This murderous steam carriage itself was invented by the pioneer of the steam turbine and Ward's
cousin, Sir Charles Algernon Parsons and his brother.
Remarkably, Parsons was only 15 in 1869 when he invented one of the earliest precursors
to modern transport.