First Person to Publicly Drive a Car (And it was a woman!)
On August 5, 1888, without her husband’s knowledge, Bertha Benz drove her sons Richard and Eugen in one of Benz’s newly-constructed ‘Patent Motorwagen’ automobiles. Her husband was none other than the automobile inventor, Karl Benz. In 1886, Benz presented the Patent-Motorwagen automobile to the world. Within the decade, 25 vehicles had been built. With cutting-edge bicycle constructions, the Model I was the original Patent Motor Car and the world’s first automobile. Though she was the first one to drive publicly, Karl Benz was the first person to actually drive a car. But his trips were only a few miles long and were just trials with mechanical assistants.
Bertha Benz drove the car for about 65 miles from Mannheim to Pforzheim. With that feat, she became the first person to drive an automobile over more than a very short distance. Bertha demonstrated her significant technical capabilities on this journey. With no fuel tank and only a 4.5-liter 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 to purchase the fuel. At the time, petrol and other fuels could only be bought from chemists, and so this is how the chemist in Wiesloch became the first fuel station in the world. She cleaned a blocked fuel line with her hat pin and used her garter as insulation material. 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.