History
The world's first long distance road trip by automobile took place in Germany in August 1888 when Bertha Benz, the wife of Karl Benz, the inventor of the first patented motor car (the Benz Patent-Motorwagen), travelled from Mannheim to Pforzheim (a distance of 106 km / 66 miles) in the third experimental Benz motor car (which had a maximum speed of 10 mph/16 km/h) and back, with her two teenage sons Richard and Eugen but without the consent and knowledge of her husband. Her official reason was that she wanted to visit her mother but unofficially she intended to generate publicity for her husband's invention (which had only been used on short test drives before), which succeeded as the automobile took off greatly afterwards and the Benz's family business eventually evolved into the present day Mercedes-Benz company.
In 1899, F. O. Stanley and his wife Flora drove their Stanley Steamer automobile, sometimes called a locomobile, to the summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire in the United States and to generate publicity for their automobile. The 7.6-mile (12.2 km) journey took over two hours (not counting time to add more water); the descent was accomplished by putting the engine in low gear and doing lots of braking.
Read more about this topic: Driving
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I believe my ardour for invention springs from his loins. I can’t say that the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.”
—Caresse Crosby (1892–1970)
“If you look at history you’ll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)