"No invention of such far-reaching importance ...so quickly exerted influences [on] the national culture."
U.S. government commission, 1931
It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine a world without the motorcar. When German engineer Karl Benz (1844-1929) drove a motorcar tricycle in 1885 and fellow Germans Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) and Wilhelm Maybach (1846-1929) converted a horse-drawn carriage into a four-wheeled motorcar in August 1886, none of them could have foreseen the effects of their new invention.
Benz recognized the great potential of petrol as a fuel. His three-wheeled car had a top speed of just ten miles (16 km) per hour with its four-stroke, one- cylinder engine. After receiving his patent in January 1886, he began selling the Benz Velo, but the public doubted its reliability. Benz's wife Bertha had a brilliant idea to advertise the new car. In 1888 she took it on a 60-mile (100 km) trip from
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