Berta Benz, wife of inventor Karl Benz, takes her husband’s car on the first documented automobile road trip.
The trip included the first road repairs, the first automotive-marketing stunt, the first case of a wife borrowing her husband’s car without asking, and the first motor-vehicle violation of highway laws.
Karl Benz had been working on the car since 1884. But Berta was fed up with Karl’s patient, conservative ways: she decided to sensationalize his invention. She recruited their two sons—Eugen, fifteen, and Richard, thirteen—to help push the car up the steeper hills, where the 0.88-horsepower engine wouldn’t make the grade. They departed at five o’clock on a peaceful August morning (some sources say August 5). The sixty-mile trip from Mannheim to Pforzheim was a challenge when there were no gas stations or repair shops. Benz and her boys had to follow wagon tracks, which was illegal for automobiles. Top speed might have reached 10 miles an hour—downhill.
They had to stop every fifteen to twenty miles to buy fuel: benzine (aka ligroin), usually available from pharmacies. The cooling system was open, so water boiled off, which meant they had to refill the water tanks about every twelve miles. They occasionally asked local shoemakers to replace the leather brake-shoe linings. Frau Benz even plugged a leaky valve with a garter and used hairpins to free clogged valves. Despite the challenges, the Benzes reached Pforzheim that night. They stayed a few days so the Benz boys could show off their father’s car, and then returned by a different, more level route.
Karl Benz exhibited a fancier version of the car in September, winning a gold medal and lavish press attention. Berta’s publicity stunt had worked. —DT (who’s married to Berta’s great-great-grandniece)