1844-1929

German Engineer

It is difficult to say who actually "invented" the automobile. In part, this is because it is hard to define what exactly constitutes an automobile. The first self-propelled road vehicle was probably the steam-powered tractor driven in the 1760s by Nicolas Cugnot (1725-1804), a French army engineer who designed it to pull artillery. However, the first person to manufacture and sell liquid-fueled machines similar to what we call cars today was undoubtedly Karl Benz.

Karl Friedrich Benz. (The Library of Congress. Reproduced by permission.)

Born in Mannheim, Germany, in 1844, Benz shared with his father, one of the early locomotive engineers, a passion for the mechanical sciences. At school he delved into chemistry, the new field of photography, and was especially intrigued by clockworks. In his autobiography he remembered "the marvelous language that gear wheels talk as they mesh with one another...