CNJ+ June 2023

FIRST WOMAN TO TEST DRIVE HER HUSBAND’S PROTOTYPE PATENT — MOTORWAGEN Bertha Benz

By, Pam Teel

to take the car for a test drive. Her children wheeled the car out of the garage, started it up, and they were off down the dirt road. They drove from Mannheim to Pforzheim in a Model III, without telling her husband and without permission of the authorities. Before this historic trip, motorized drives were merely very short trials made with assistance of mechanics.

Bertha Benz was a German automotive pioneer and inventor. She was also the business partner and wife of automobile inventor, Carl Benz. On August 5, 1888, 39-year-old Bertha, was the first person to drive an internal- com bustion- engine automobile over a long distance of 65 miles. She took her two young teenage sons, Richard and Eugen, with her. Her husband had the car sitting in the garage for months, still thinking that it wasn’t ready for the road. She, apparently, thought that it was. Without him knowing, she decided

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JUNE 2023