Carl Benz had invented the automobile. What he had not managed to do was convince anyone to buy one.
Two years after filing his patent in January 1886, the Benz Patent-Motorwagen sat largely unsold, dismissed by a skeptical public that saw a three-wheeled, horse-less carriage as a novelty rather than a practical machine.
Carl was a brilliant engineer and a poor businessman, and the gap between his invention and commercial success was widening. His wife understood exactly what needed to happen.
On August 5, 1888, while Carl was still asleep, Bertha Benz left a note on the kitchen table, loaded their two teenage sons into the Motorwagen, and drove north from Mannheim toward Pforzheim, sixty-five miles away, without telling him where they were going or when they would return.
The roads were unpaved. No one had driven an automobile this distance before.
There were no mechanics, no fueling stations, and no map designed for a machine rather than a horse.
She stopped at a pharmacy in Wiesloch to buy Ligroin, a cleaning solvent that happened to work as fuel for the single-cylinder engine.
The pharmacist sold it to her without fully understanding what she needed it for. That pharmacy, still operating today, is recognized as the world’s first filling station.
When the fuel line clogged, she cleared it with her hat pin. When the ignition wire wore through, she insulated it with her garter.
When the wooden brake blocks burned down to nothing on a steep descent, she pulled into a cobbler’s workshop and had him nail leather strips to the brake shoes, inventing brake lining on the spot.
Sometimes you do have to go a long way to make a point