{"id":560,"date":"2010-11-05T10:25:27","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T00:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/?p=560"},"modified":"2020-06-20T02:00:57","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T16:00:57","slug":"mrs-benz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/home\/mrs-benz\/","title":{"rendered":"Mrs Benz"},"content":{"rendered":"

October the 25th<\/sup> is Pink Ribbon Day and the street appeal is being launched at the time of writing.\u00a0 While pink cars are never going to be popular (see some of my previous posts), this breast cancer awareness campaign seems like a good excuse to celebrate one of the great women of motoring history.<\/p>\n

The woman is, of course, Bertha Benz, and without her, the car might never have existed.\u00a0 Bertha was born in 1849. In 1886, she was a typical Victorian housewife in Mannheim, Germany, busy supporting her husband, Dr Carl Benz, and raising her four children.\u00a0 Dr Carl was facing a few problems with his newly patented invention. Nobody wanted it, preferring steam trains and horses.\u00a0 Some people even thought that this noisy contraption that moved by some mysterious means was powered by black magic.\u00a0 They say that behind every great man is a great woman, and it was time for the great woman to step in.<\/p>\n

In 1888, Bertha Benz stepped in and decided to load the family into the car and visit her mother.\u00a0 This sounds like such an ordinary activity but in Bertha\u2019s day, it was revolutionary.\u00a0 This was the Victorian era, before women got the vote \u2013 when women were considered \u201cthe weaker sex\u201d and were encumbered by a multitude of corsets and petticoats.\u00a0 Bertha\u2019s mother lived 106 km away in Pforzheim, and the motor-car had never been tested over these distances.\u00a0 Bertha didn\u2019t tell her plans to Carl, but planned the journey in secret with her older two sons, leaving early in the morning before Carl woke up.\u00a0 Presumably the other children were left with the nanny (she had four children at this stage; the fifth came along a few years later.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The journey was a success and proved to the world that the motor car was useful and could be driven by anybody \u2013 even a woman.\u00a0 Bertha had obviously picked up a thing or three from her husband\u2019s workshop, as she was able to use items of her clothing to make a few repairs.\u00a0 A long, thin hatpin was used to unclog a blocked fuel line and the broken ignition was fixed with a garter.\u00a0 However, a blacksmith had to be called on for a chain for the gearbox, and a shoemaker provided some leather bits for the brake blocks.\u00a0 And Bertha had to stop for petrol.\u00a0 While bowsers hadn\u2019t been invented, petrol was used medicinally \u2013 it was used as a treatment for headlice, which is not recommended today! \u2013 so she was able to pick up what she needed at a couple of chemist\u2019s shop.<\/p>\n

Bertha\u2019s trip garnered a lot of press publicity and the popularity of the car was secured.\u00a0 Carl Benz was also able to draw on Bertha\u2019s extensive test drive to make some improvements, especially to the gearing system for hill driving.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today, the Bertha Benz Memorial Route<\/a> is one of the more pleasant, if obscure, motoring pilgrimages to make in Germany, although most petrol-head tourists prefer the Autobahns and the N\u00fcrburgring, rather than this more leisurely route in the Black Forest region.\u00a0 And in the pioneering spirit of Carl and Bertha Benz, the Bertha Benz Challenge has been established as a rally, following Bertha\u2019s original route, open for alternative drive systems only (hybrid, electric, hydrogen, fuel cell) to demonstrate, as Bertha did, that good new ideas shouldn\u2019t stay on the demo floor but should be used on the road.\u00a0 This is planned for 2011, in conjunction with the Frankfurt Motor Show and is part of the celebrations for the 125th<\/sup> anniversary of Carl Benz\u2019s patent.<\/p>\n

Benzene, which is added to petrol to raise the octane level and prevent knocking, is not named after Carl and Bertha Benz, in spite of the similar name. It\u2019s derived from gum benzoin, which it was first derived from. http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/zaymi-na-kartu-blog-single.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October the 25th is Pink Ribbon Day and the street appeal is being launched at the time of writing.\u00a0 While pink cars are never going to be popular (see some of my previous posts), this breast cancer awareness campaign seems like a good excuse to celebrate one of the great women of motoring history. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12541,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560\/revisions\/12541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}