Benz Patent-Motorwagen (1886): The First Practical Automobile

The Benz Patent-Motorwagen was a three-wheeled vehicle powered by a petrol engine, built by the German engineer Karl Benz in Mannheim. On 29 January 1886 Benz applied for a patent on his “vehicle with gas engine drive”, granted as German patent No. 37435. Because it was designed as a complete motor vehicle rather than a carriage with an engine attached, it is widely regarded as the first practical automobile and the starting point of the modern car industry.

Background: the search for a horseless carriage

People had tried to build self-propelled road vehicles for more than a century. In 1769 the French military engineer Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot built a steam-powered tractor to haul artillery, and steam carriages and buses ran on British roads in the 1830s. Steam engines, however, were heavy, slow to start and needed a large supply of water and fuel. Restrictive laws, such as Britain’s Locomotive Acts, further discouraged road vehicles.

The internal combustion engine offered an alternative. In the 1860s the Belgian-born engineer Étienne Lenoir built gas engines, and in 1876 Nicolaus Otto, working at the Deutz company near Cologne, developed a successful four-stroke engine. These early engines ran on town gas and were large stationary machines for workshops. The challenge was to make an engine light, fast-running and fuelled by a liquid that a vehicle could carry.

Karl Benz and his engine

Karl Benz was born on 25 November 1844 in Mühlburg, now part of Karlsruhe. His father, a railway engine driver, died when Karl was two. Benz studied mechanical engineering at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic and worked for several engineering firms before setting up his own workshop in Mannheim in 1871.

His business struggled. To earn money he built a two-stroke stationary engine, which first ran on New Year’s Eve 1879. Benz later developed the components a vehicle would need, including a speed regulator, battery ignition, the spark plug, a clutch and a gear shift, and a water radiator. In 1883 he founded Benz & Cie. with two partners, which built stationary engines and gave him the resources to pursue his real goal, a motor vehicle.

Benz made a crucial decision: rather than fitting an engine into a horse carriage, he designed the whole vehicle around the engine. He chose three wheels because he was not satisfied with the steering systems then available for four-wheeled carriages.

How the Motorwagen worked

The first Patent-Motorwagen had a light frame of steel tubes, two large rear wheels and a single front wheel, all with wire spokes and solid rubber tyres. The driver steered with a small tiller connected to the front wheel by a rack and pinion.

Behind the bench seat sat a single-cylinder four-stroke engine of about 954 cc. It produced roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of a horsepower (about 0.5 to 0.55 kW) at a few hundred revolutions per minute (figures of 250 to 400 are cited), fast for engines of the time. A large horizontal flywheel smoothed its running. The engine had electric ignition from a battery and an induction coil, and a simple surface carburettor that turned the fuel into vapour. It was cooled by water that evaporated and had to be topped up.

Power passed through a belt to a countershaft with a differential, then by two chains to the rear wheels. Moving the belt from a loose pulley to a fixed one acted as a clutch. The car had no gearbox at first, and its top speed was about 16 km/h (10 mph). The fuel was ligroin, a light petroleum spirit then sold by pharmacies as a cleaning solvent.

The patent and first drives

Benz filed his patent application with the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin on 29 January 1886, and it was granted on 2 November that year. The patent, DRP No. 37435, covered a vehicle driven by a “gas engine”, which in the language of the time meant an engine running on vaporised fuel mixed with air. It protected the vehicle as a whole, not just the engine.

The vehicle had already been tested in the yard of Benz’s workshop in 1885. Its first public outing took place on 3 July 1886 on the Ringstrasse in Mannheim, and local newspapers reported on the strange machine. Early tests were short and often ended in breakdowns, and many onlookers regarded the vehicle as a curiosity. Benz improved the design over the next two years, producing a Model II and then a Model III with wooden-spoked wheels, a more powerful engine and, eventually, a simple two-speed transmission.

Bertha Benz’s journey

Public doubts were overcome largely thanks to Bertha Benz, Karl’s wife, whose dowry had helped fund his business. Early one morning in August 1888, without telling her husband, she set out in a Model III with their sons Eugen, aged 15, and Richard, aged 13, to visit her mother in her home town of Pforzheim.

The route was about 106 km (66 miles) long, by far the longest journey yet made in a motor car. Along the way Bertha bought ligroin from a pharmacy in Wiesloch, which is often called the world’s first filling station. According to the family’s accounts she cleared a blocked fuel line with a hatpin, insulated an ignition wire with a garter and had a cobbler fit new leather to the brakes. On steep hills the boys had to push. They reached Pforzheim by evening and sent a telegram to Karl, returning a few days later.

The trip proved that the car could be used for real travel, and it gave Benz practical ideas, including the need for a lower gear for climbing hills. Since 2008 the route has been signposted as the Bertha Benz Memorial Route.

Selling the first cars

Sales were slow in Germany, where the public and authorities remained cautious. Benz found a more receptive market in France, where his agent Émile Roger, based in Paris, sold Benz engines and vehicles. A Patent-Motorwagen was shown at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889, though it attracted little attention beside the newly completed Eiffel Tower.

In all, around 25 Patent-Motorwagen were built between 1886 and 1893. Benz then moved to four-wheeled designs: the Victoria of 1893 and the Velo of 1894, a small car produced in much larger numbers. By the late 1890s Benz & Cie. was one of the largest car makers in the world.

Benz, Daimler and the question of “first”

Benz was not alone. About 100 km away in Cannstatt, near Stuttgart, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach developed a fast-running petrol engine. They fitted it to a wooden two-wheeled “riding car” in 1885 and to a converted four-wheeled carriage in 1886. The two teams worked independently and did not meet.

Other inventors are also sometimes credited. The Austrian Siegfried Marcus built petrol-powered vehicles in Vienna, but the dates and workings of his machines are disputed, and they had no lasting influence. Steam and electric vehicles also existed. Benz’s claim rests on combining an internal combustion engine and a purpose-built chassis into one working vehicle, protecting it by patent and going on to produce it for sale.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Benz invented the internal combustion engine. Engines of this kind had been developed by Lenoir, Otto and others before him. Benz’s achievement was to build a light, practical engine and a vehicle designed around it.
• Myth: Bertha Benz’s drive was a minor family outing. It was the first documented long-distance journey by car, and it was widely reported and helped change public attitudes.
• Fact: the original car survives. The 1886 vehicle is preserved at the Deutsches Museum in Munich; most of those seen elsewhere are replicas.

By the numbers

Legacy

The Patent-Motorwagen launched an industry that transformed the twentieth century. Benz’s company merged in 1926 with the Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft to form Daimler-Benz, maker of Mercedes-Benz cars. Karl Benz died on 4 April 1929 in Ladenburg, having seen the car become a mass product.

Later inventions turned the car from a rich person’s novelty into everyday transport. Pneumatic tyres made it more comfortable, the diesel engine provided another source of power, and the Ford Model T of 1908, built in huge numbers, put cars within reach of ordinary families. In 2011 Benz’s patent document was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register as a record of world significance.

Timeline

• 1844, 25 November: Karl Benz is born in Mühlburg, near Karlsruhe.
• 1879, 31 December: Benz’s first two-stroke engine runs.
• 1883, October: Benz & Cie. is founded in Mannheim.
• 1886, 29 January: Benz applies for patent DRP No. 37435.
• 1886, 3 July: The Motorwagen makes its first public drive in Mannheim.
• 1886, 2 November: The patent is granted.
• 1888, August: Bertha Benz drives from Mannheim to Pforzheim.
• 1889: A Benz vehicle is exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle.
• 1926: Benz & Cie. and Daimler merge to form Daimler-Benz.
• 1929, 4 April: Karl Benz dies in Ladenburg.

Why it matters

The Benz Patent-Motorwagen was the first vehicle designed as a complete, self-propelled petrol car and the first to be patented and sold. From this small, slow three-wheeler grew the automobile, which reshaped cities, economies and daily life across the world.