This week, I shall tell the tale of Carl Benz, a great innovator, and Bertha Ringer Benz, who boldly went where neither man nor woman had gone before. By seeing possibilities that even her engineer husband failed to see, she managed, with one journey to visit her mother, to leave an indelible mark on the history of technology. Her trailblazing journey was a big reason why her husband’s innovation would become ubiquitous for centuries to come, so that even today, when their surname is spoken, everyone immediately knows what technology you’re talking about.
Carl or Karl (he seems to have used both spellings) Benz was, of course, builder of the first automobile. He was born in 1844 in Karlsruhe, Germany, an illegitimate child born in a hotel. Carl’s father died when he was an infant, and he was raised by a single mother who spent her widow’s pension on giving Carl a good education. Carl excelled in his studies, and at the age of just sixteen, he was accepted into the mechanical engineering program at Karlsruhe Polytechnic (now known as KIT). One of his professors was Franz Grashof (the same guy that the four-bar linkage condition is named after), who taught him the background he needed for his later inventions.
By contrast, Bertha Ringer was born to a wealthy family, in the nearby city of Pforzheim. Following German tradition, her parents saved up for a dowry. In 1871 she met Carl, a young engineer whose start-up was struggling because he just wasn’t getting along with his business partner. Bertha decided to spend her dowry money to buy out the partner’s share of the company, and in 1872, Carl and Bertha got married.
For the next decade the Benzes’ company primarily produced iron parts for the building industry. But that wasn’t Carl’s passion. An enthusiastic cyclist, he started to dream: What if I could put an engine on wheels? The Benzes pitched the idea to a number of investors. After getting some money, they sold their company and founded a new one, the Benz & Cie Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik (Benz and Co. Rhine Gas Engine Factory). With the new sponsors, the Benzes were now financially stable enough that Carl could take his time realizing his dream – a self-propelling vehicle, powered by an engine.
He built on the work of many other inventors. In the 1850s, the Italians Barsanti and Matteucci had discovered that the combustion of a fuel-air mixture produced such a strong motion that an engine could be powered by using a piston to harness the engine. A few years later, Rochas discovered that compressing the fuel-air mixture before burning it dramatically increased the energy output. Then in 1877, the engineer Nik Otto combined these two ideas, building an engine with a compression stroke followed immediately by combustion, inventing the four-stroke cycle which now bears his name.
Otto, however, never tried to install his engine on a vehicle, not seeing the potential there. It was left to Benz and Co. to build the first automobile. There were a lot of setbacks – many times, Bertha had to convince Carl to keep working at it, and her faith was rewarded. Over the next few years, the company would develop and patent several devices in response to challenges they encountered: a carburetor for storing fuel and mixing it with air, a gear shift and a clutch so the car could travel at faster speeds, and a water radiator to prevent the engine from overheating. Finally, in January 1886, Carl was issued a patent for his contraption, the first automobile in history.
After tinkering a bit more, Benz and Co. began selling cars to the public. There was just one problem. Sure, it was a nice gadget, but nobody really knew what it could do – could it really be useful for anything? Sales were few and far between. This is where Bertha decided to take action.
On August 5, 1886, Bertha got up very early, took two of her sons, and told them they were going on a journey to visit her mother. She left a note for Carl telling him where she was going, but didn’t mention how. They pushed the car Carl was working on a little ways away from the house, making sure not to wake him, before turning on the engine. They would encounter and fix numerous problems before the day was over.
First of all, they didn’t have a map. They had to ask around for a while to even figure out what horse-trail they needed to take (there were, of course, no paved roads yet). Before long, the fuel line became clogged. Not to worry, though – Bertha took her hairpin and cleared the fuel line. About halfway into their journey, the carburetor was running very low on fuel. (That’s right, Carl hadn’t invented a fuel tank yet – seems like he didn’t realize how quickly the gas could disappear). Bertha eventually managed to find a pharmacist who had some petroleum sitting around, and the journey could go on.
When she drove up a steep hill, the little 2.5 hp engine just couldn’t. So Bertha and kids had to get out and push. When the radiator ran out of water, they went into the nearest pub and got some. When they hit a steep downhill stretch, the brake almost gave way. In the next town, Bertha found a shoemaker to slap some leather on the brakes to prevent them from wearing out, and thus brake lining was born. It was nighttime by the time they finally reached Bertha’s childhood home in Pforzheim – but history had been made. Bertha sent a telegram to Carl when they arrived, telling him they’d just driven 100 km in his gadget.
The return journey was much smoother. When they arrived home, Carl began implementing a number of iterations to his design – a fuel tank was added, instead of just using the carburetor to store fuel. Extra gears were added for hills. And brake lining was installed. But more importantly, astonished journalists were reporting that the Benz car could actually be practical. The tipping point had been reached – the automobile was here to stay.
Over the next few decades, Benz and Co. would start mass producing their vehicles, and diversify to create trucks and buses as well. Imitating her first journey, every week Bertha would take out the latest car design and test it. Carl would make another advance in 1896 when he built the first horizontally-opposed piston engine. But soon, the pace of automotive engineering got too fast, and Carl just couldn’t keep up – in 1903, he turned over the company to his two sons, who had gone on that first car journey.
In later interviews, Carl always credited Bertha for believing in him and sticking with him all those years. The two of them – a meticulous, diligent engineer and a resourceful, visionary advocate – formed a great couple, and through them the world of the car was born. Bertha’s contributions were all the more remarkable given that 19th-century Germany was quite a patriarchal society. It really shouldn’t need to be said any more, but may we never again think that any gender is more competent at engineering than another.
Carl lived just long enough to see the Great Depression, which required him to merge his company with Daimler Motor Corp. to stay afloat. Bertha would outlive her husband another fifteen years, passing away in 1944 at the age of 95. But their legacy is clear – and today, Daimler-Benz is a $200 billion company making some of the most acclaimed cars in the world.
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