Bertha Benz was a German automotive pioneer and inventor.
15 Facts About Bertha Benz
2.
Bertha Benz was the business partner and wife of automobile inventor Carl Benz.
3.
Cacilie Bertha Benz Ringer was born on 3 May 1849 to a wealthy family in Pforzheim in the Grand Duchy of Baden.
4.
Two years before her marriage to Carl Bertha Benz, she used part of her dowry to invest in his failing iron construction company.
5.
Bertha Benz served as a field tester, contributing to the design of the Motorwagen by adding wire insulation and inventing leather brake pads to supplement the wooden brakes when they failed.
6.
Bertha Benz would hold patent rights under modern law, but as a married woman, she was not allowed to be named as an inventor on the patent at that time.
7.
On July 3,1886, Bertha Benz presented the Patent-Motorwagen automobile to the public in Mannheim.
8.
On 5 August 1888,39-year-old Bertha Benz drove from Mannheim to Pforzheim with her sons Richard and Eugen, thirteen and fifteen years old respectively, in a Model III, without telling her husband and without permission of the authorities, thus becoming the first person to drive an automobile a significant distance.
9.
Bertha Benz left Mannheim around dawn, solving numerous problems along the way.
10.
Bertha Benz cleaned a blocked fuel line with her hat pin and used her garter as insulation material.
11.
Bertha Benz reached Pforzheim somewhat after dusk, notifying her husband of her successful journey by telegram.
12.
Bertha Benz reported everything that had happened along the way and made important suggestions, such as the introduction of an additional gear for climbing hills and brake linings to improve brake-power.
13.
Bertha Benz's trip demonstrated to the burgeoning automotive industry that test drives were essential to their business.
14.
Carl Bertha Benz had died in 1929, after the success of Daimler-Bertha Benz was assured.
15.
The Bertha Benz Challenge, embedded in the framework of the ceremony of Automobile Summer 2011, the big official German event and birthday party commemorating the invention of the automobile by Carl Benz over 135 years ago, took place on Bertha Benz Memorial Route on 10 and 11 September 2011.