Timeline Thursday 3 May 1849

Events on Thursday 3 May 1849 2

• 1849 – 1944 Bertha Benz The investor who was not allowed to be one Bertha Ringer put her dowry into Carl Benz's failing workshop in 1870, while still unmarried and therefore still legally able to invest. On marrying him in 1872 she lost that standing under the law of Baden, and continued funding him anyway. She wound ignition coils, argued down the doubters, and in August 1888 took the Patent-Motorwagen and her two sons on an unauthorised hundred-kilometre drive that invented the brake lining, exposed the need for a lower gear, and turned an unsellable curiosity into a product. She was ninety-five when she died, and still driving into old age.
• 1849 Bertha Benz born in Pforzheim Unfortunately only a girl again Cäcilie Bertha Ringer is born third of nine children into a prosperous carpenter's family. In the family Bible her father records her birth with the note that it is, unfortunately, only a girl again. She later said she read it as a child and decided what to do about it. Higher education is closed to women in the Grand Duchy of Baden, so she does not get any.