Bertha Benz (née Ringer) (born 3 May 1849 in Pforzheim, Germany, married inventor Karl Benz on 20 July 1872, and died 5 May 1944 in Ladenburg). She invested in Benz's business in 1871, enabling him to develop the first patented automobile and in 1888 she was the first person to drive an automobile over a long distance, which brought it world-wide attention.
In 1871, at the age of twenty-seven, Karl Benz joined August Ritter in launching a mechanical workshop in Mannheim, also dedicated to supplying construction materials: the Iron Foundry and Mechanical Workshop, later renamed, Factory for Machines for Sheet-metal Working.
The enterprise's first year was a complete disaster. Ritter turned out to be unreliable and local authorities confiscated the business. The difficulty was solved when Benz's fiancée, Bertha Ringer, bought Ritter's share in the company using her dowry and became Benz's business partner.[1]
On July 20, 1872 Karl Benz and Bertha Ringer married, later having five children: Eugen (1873), Richard (1874), Clara (1877), Thilde (1882), and Ellen (1890).
In early August 1888 and without her husband's knowledge, she drove her sons, Richard and Eugen, fourteen and fifteen years old, in one of Benz's newly-constructed Patent Motorwagen automobiles—from Mannheim to Pforzheim—becoming the first person to drive an automobile over more than a very short distance. The distance was more than 106 km (60 miles). Distances traveled before this historic trip were short, and merely trials with mechanical assistants.
Although the ostensible purpose of the trip was to visit her mother, Bertha Benz also had another motive: to show her brilliant husband—who had failed to consider marketing his invention adequately—that the automobile would become a financial success once it was shown to be useful to the general public.
On the way, she solved numerous problems. She had to find Ligroin as fuels which was available only at dispensing chemists' shops. A blacksmith had to help mend a chain at one point. Brake linings needed replacement. Bertha Benz had to use a long, straight hairpin to clean a fuel pipe which had become blocked and to insulate a wire with a garter. She left Mannheim around dawn and reached Pforzheim somewhat after dusk, notifying her husband of her successful journey by telegram. She drove back to Mannheim the next day.
Along the way, several people were frightened by the automobile and the novel trip received a great deal of publicity—as she had sought. The drive was very helpful for Karl Benz, as he was able to introduce several improvements after his wife reported everything that had happened along the way—and she made important suggestions, such as the introduction of an additional gear for climbing hills.
Bertha Benz died at the age of ninety-five in Ladenburg, where the workshop of Karl Benz in Ladenburg had stood after they moved there in 1906.
In Germany, a festive holiday every two years celebrates this historic trip of Bertha Benz and features antique automobiles. In 2008, the Bertha Benz Memorial Route[2] was officially approved as a route of industrial heritage of mankind, because it follows Bertha Benz's tracks of the world's first long-distance journey by automobile in 1888. Now everybody can follow the 194 km of signposted route from Mannheim via Heidelberg to Pforzheim (Black Forest) and back.
References
- ^ Mercedes-Benz, Home of Mercedes-Benz Luxury Automobiles at www.mbusa.com
- ^ Bertha Benz Memorial Route (German-government-approved non-profit official site)
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