KARL BENZ. Founder- MERCEDES BENZ. And finest mechanical engineer.

 Karl Friedrich Benz  (November 25, 1844 – April 4, 1929) was a German engine designer and car engineer, generally regarded as theinventor of the petrol-powered automobile, 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.

Early life[edit source | editbeta]

Karl Benz was born Karl Friedrich Michael Vaillant, in November 25, 1844 in Mühlburg, now a borough of Karlsruhe, Baden, which is part of modernGermany, to Josephine Vaillant and a locomotive driver, Johann George Benz, whom she married a few months later.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} When he was two years old, his father was killed in a railway accident, and 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 aprodigious student. In 1853, at the age of nine he started at the scientifically oriented Lyceum. Next he studied at the Poly-Technical University under the instruction of Ferdinand Redtenbacher.

Karl Benz, 1869, 25 years old (Zenodot Verlagsges. mbH)

Benz had originally focused his studies on locksmithing, but eventually followed his father's steps toward locomotive engineering. On September 30, 1860, at age fifteen, he passed the entrance exam for mechanical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe, which he subsequently attended. Benz was graduated July 9, 1864 at nineteen.

During these years, while riding his bicycle, he started to envision concepts for a vehicle that would eventually become the horseless carriage.

Following his formal education, Benz had seven years of professional training in several companies, but did not fit well in any of them. The training started in Karlsruhe with two years of varied jobs in a mechanical engineeringcompany.

He then moved to Mannheim to work as a draftsman and designer in a scales factory. In 1868 he went to Pforzheim to work for a bridge building companyGebrüder Benckiser Eisenwerke und Maschinenfabrik. Finally, he went to Vienna for a short period to work at an iron construction company.

In 2011, a dramatized television movie about the life of Karl and Bertha Benz was made named Carl & Bertha which premiered on 11 May and was aired by Das Erste on 23 May. A trailer of the movie and a "making of" special were released on YouTube.