Bertha Benz

Bertha Benz (; ; 3 May 1849 – 5 May 1944) was a German automotive pioneer. She was the business partner, investor and wife of automobile inventor Carl Benz. On 5 August 1888, she was the first person to drive an internal-combustion-engined automobile over a long distance, field testing the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, inventing brake lining and solving several practical issues during the journey of 105 km (65 miles). In doing so, she brought the Patent-Motorwagen worldwide attention and got their company its first sales. Bertha Benz was not allowed to study in the Grand Duchy of Baden, and her financial and practical engineering contributions have long been overlooked until the 21st century.

Early life and education

Cäcilie Bertha Ringer was born on 3 May 1849 to a wealthy carpenter family in Pforzheim. She was the third of nine children. Her father, Karl Friedrich Ringer, a master builder and carpenter, and her 20-year younger mother, Auguste Friedrich, were wealthy individuals who invested heavily in their children's educations in Pforzheim in the Grand Duchy of Baden. Her father became wealthy by speculating with real estate. As an unmarried woman, she was able to do so; after she married Benz, according to German law, Bertha lost her legal power to act as an investor.

Adult life On 20 July 1872, Bertha Ringer married Carl Benz. The Model II was converted to a four-wheeler for test purposes, making it the only one of this model. On 3 July 1886, Karl Benz presented the Patent-Motorwagen automobile to the public in Mannheim. It had powered rear wheels with a ringed steel and solid rubber, steerable front wheel and optional seat arrangements and a folding top.

Although the ostensible purpose of the trip was to visit her mother, Bertha Benz had other motives – to prove to her husband, who had failed to adequately consider marketing his invention, that the automobile in which they both had heavily invested would become a financial success once it was shown to be useful to the general public; and to give her husband the confidence that his constructions had a future.

She left Mannheim around dawn, solving numerous problems along the way. Bertha demonstrated her significant technical capabilities on this journey. With no fuel tank and only a 4.5-litre supply of petrol in the carburetor, she had to find ligroin, the petroleum solvent needed for the car to run. The solvent was only available at apothecary shops, so she stopped in Wiesloch at the city pharmacy, Stadt-Apotheke, to purchase the fuel. At the time, petrol and other fuels could only be bought from chemists [pharmacists in US English], and so this is how the chemist in Wiesloch became the first fuel station in the world. A blacksmith had to help mend a chain at one point. When the wooden brakes began to fail, Benz visited a cobbler to install leather, making the world's first pair of brake linings. An evaporative cooling system was employed to cool the engine, making water supply a big worry along the trip. The trio added water to their supply every time they stopped.

In 1926, Benz & Cie. merged with Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach's company to form Daimler-Benz, which became home to the Mercedes-Benz. Karl Benz died in 1929 with the beginning of the Great Depression.

On her 95th birthday, on 3 May 1944, she received the title of Honorary Senator of the Technical University of Karlsruhe, where her husband had studied – women were not allowed to study during her youth.

Bertha Benz died at age 95 in her village in Ladenburg on 5 May 1944. was officially approved as a route of the industrial heritage of humankind, because it follows Bertha Benz's path during the world's first long-distance journey by automobile in 1888. Now it is possible to follow the 194 km of signs indicating her route from Mannheim via Heidelberg to Pforzheim (Black Forest) and back.

The Bertha Benz Challenge, embedded in the framework of the ceremony of Automobile Summer 2011, the official German event and birthday party commemorating the invention of the automobile by Carl Benz , took place on Bertha Benz Memorial Route on 10 and 11 September 2011. It was open for sustainable mobility – hybrid and electric, hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles, and other economical vehicles. The motto is Bertha Benz Challenge – Sustainable Mobility on the World's Oldest Automobile Road!

On 25 January 2011, Deutsche Welle (DW-TV) broadcast worldwide in its series, Made in Germany, a TV documentary on the invention of the automobile by Carl Benz, highlighting the very important role of his wife, Bertha Benz. The report is not only on the history of the automobile, but took a look at its future, shown by the Bertha Benz Challenge on 10 and 11 September 2011.

In 2016, she was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame, 42 years after her husband was inducted.

The Benz home has been designated as historic and is used as a scientific meeting facility for a nonprofit foundation, the Daimler and Benz Foundation, which aims to promote science and research in order to gain a better understanding of the correlation between man, the environment and technology.

In popular culture In 2011, a dramatized television movie about the life of Carl and Bertha Benz was made named , which premiered on 11 May and was aired by Das Erste on 23 May. A trailer of the movie and a "making of" special were released on YouTube.