THE FIRST MOTOR CAR IN THE WORLD
Carl Benz had the brilliant idea of attaching an internal combustion engine to a horseless carriage, but getting there was quite a journey … and might not have happened at all but for his wife’ s involvement, as Giles Chapman explains.
Patent DRP( Deutsches Reichspatent) No. 37 435 is the most important single piece of paper in motoring history. Applied for by Carl Benz on 29 January 1886 and granted on 2 November by the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin, it is practically the motor car’ s birth certificate. The document marks the very beginning of its biography, from a time before the mechanical infant set out to conquer the world. The father, in particular, was sheepishly proud, but even he could not have known he was bringing to life an invention that would profoundly change everyone’ s lives.
At the time, 140 years ago, Carl Benz’ s satisfaction with his engineering achievement was no doubt tempered by his struggle to keep his fledgling business afloat and to prosper. It hadn’ t been a particularly easy journey for this serious-minded, 44- year old engineer, born in Karlsruhe on 25 November 1844, the son of a railway locomotive driver. His father, however, passed away when Carl was just two years old, and his mother did everything she could to overcome their sudden poverty and give him a good education. Science was his thing, and she can only have been delighted when Carl won a place at the local Karlsruhe Polytechnic.
Benz was fired-up. For some time, he’ d been toying with his idea for a‘ horseless carriage’ to incorporate a gasoline engine, and all his recent experiences – good and bad – now gave him the confidence to go for it.
After Carl’ s graduation, there followed several years working for various engineering firms in junior positions but, for whatever reason, never quite finding his natural home. The young Mr Benz decided he was more inclined to enterprise and in 1871 he set up a metallurgy workshop in Mannheim, complete with foundry, with a partner named August Ritter. They set out to manufacture industrial machinery, but Ritter proved an unreliable running mate, and certain bankruptcy was only avoided when Carl’ s fiancée Bertha Ringer used the dowry from her family to bail him out.
She must have understood her soon-to-be-husband very deeply already because she helped him restart on his own, his business called‘ Carl Benz, Iron Foundry and Engineering Workshop’ at the address T 6, 11 in Mannheim’ s historic city centre. At first, he made and sold cast-ironmongery for the construction industry to sustain his young family but, even then, he was subject to the cruelties of a fluctuating economy. His tools were seized by creditors, and soon all he had was an empty workshop.
20 The London to Brighton Veteran Car Run