Bertha Benz Stole the Car and Drove It 106 km Into History
The short answer: Bertha Benz was the wife — and first investor — of automobile inventor Karl Benz. In the early hours of August 5, 1888, without telling her husband, she took his Patent-Motorwagen No. 3 and drove it 106 kilometres from Mannheim to her mother's home in Pforzheim, with her two teenage sons. It was the first long-distance journey by car in history, and along the way she effectively invented the filling station, the brake lining, and the very idea of the road test. To be precise: she did not vanish without a word — she left Karl a note, and on arrival she sent him a telegram. The vivid small details of that day rest largely on her own later recollections, and this article marks them as such. The Wife Who Stole the Car Bertha Ringer was born in 1849 into a wealthy master builder's family in Pforzheim. In 1870, two years before her marriage to the penniless engineer Karl Benz, she took part of her own dowry and invested it in his failing iron construction company —...