Karl Friedrich Benz (help·info) (November 25, 1844 – April 4, 1929) was a German engine designer and car engineer, generally regarded as the inventor of the first automobile powered by an internal combustion engine, and together with Bertha Benz, pioneering founder of the automobile manufacturer Mercedes-Benz. Other German contemporaries, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach working as partners, also worked on similar types of inventions, without knowledge of the work of the other, but Benz received a patent for his work first, and, subsequently patented all the processes that made the internal combustion engine feasible for use in an automobile. In 1879, his first engine patent was granted to him, and in 1886, Benz was granted a patent for his first automobile.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Benz's first factory and early inventions (1871–1882)
3 Benz's Gasmotoren-Fabrik Mannheim (1882–1883)
4 Benz & Cie. and the Benz Patent Motorwagen
5 Benz & Cie. expansion
6 Blitzen Benz
7 Benz Söhne (1906–1923)
8 Toward Daimler-Benz and the first Mercedes-Benz in 1926
9 In popular culture
10 See also
11 Notes
12 References
13 External links
Early life[edit]
Karl Benz was born Karl Friedrich Michael Vaillant, on November 25, 1844 in Mühlburg, now a borough of Karlsruhe, Baden, which is part of modern Germany, to Josephine Vaillant and a locomotive driver, Johann George Benz, whom she married a few months later. According to German law, the child acquired the Name "Benz" by legal marriage of his parents Benz and Vaillant.[1][2][3][4][5] When he was two years old, his father was killed, his name was changed to Karl Friedrich Benz in remembrance of his father.[6]
Despite living in near poverty, his mother strove to give him a good education. Benz attended the local Grammar School in Karlsruhe and was a prodigious student. In 1853, at the age of nine he started at the scientifically oriented Lyceum. Next he studied at the Poly-Technical University under...