Saturday Scenes

On the 29th of January in 1886, Karl Friedrich Benz was granted a patent for his petrol fuelled automobile.

Karl Benz rode his bicycle to University every day and began daydreaming about a vehicle for the tedious journey. Twenty years later, working with the owners of a bicycle repair shop, Benz began to design this horseless carriage, using three wire wheels and a four-stroke engine.

The Benz Patent Motorwagen was first driven in Mannheim (which is where I’m from!) and Benz began selling it to the public in July of the same year. By 1893, the Benz Velo was the world’s first inexpensive, mass-produced car. Drivers purchased petrol from pharmacies who sold it in small amounts as a cleaning product. The Motorwagen did not have gears and could not climb hills unaided.

Benz Patent-Motorwagen – Wikipedia

Bertha Benz, married to Karl, chose to publicize the Patent-Motorwagen in a unique manner—she took the Patent-Motorwagen No. 3, supposedly without her husband’s knowledge, and drove it on the first long-distance automobile trip to demonstrate its feasibility as a means to travel long distances.

That trip occurred in early August 1888, as the entrepreneurial lady took her sons Eugen and Richard, fifteen and fourteen years old, on a ride from Mannheim through Heidelberg, and Wiesloch, to her hometown of Pforzheim.

As well as being the driver, Benz acted as mechanic on the drive, cleaning the carburettor with her hat pin and using a garter to insulate a wire. She refueled at the local pharmacy in Wiesloch and as the brakes wore down, Benz asked a local shoemaker to nail leather on the brake blocks, in doing so, inventing brake lining on the way.

By 1903, Benz’s designs were already considered outdated: Gottlieb Daimler had taken the four-stroke engine a step further and patented a petrol engine which is considered the prototype for the modern engine still in use.

On the 29th of January in 2011, only 125 years later, a number of people were driven to take a photograph so that we could share scenes from Saturdays all over the world.

Driven, get it? Hah!

OK, onwards:

We have a great selection of submitters both old and new. Encourage one another!

• pendrift
• icklemouse
• RAFairman
• oxenspur
• Pewari
• fluttabyz
• CallumDG
• carocat
• robdavies
• JanetIsserlis
• tradingnothing
• UKMelia
• thermalhound
• raumsinn
• sahfenn
• rOcKeTmAn_76
• jamesnnb
• HeideSpruck
• akaSylvia
• timewind
• azmichelle
• CliffStanford
• pixelfreund
• drewbenn
• elibrody
• akrabat

Are you on Twitter? Then it’s easy to take part in Saturday Scenes!

1) Take a photo on a Saturday and upload it to a site like Flickr or Twitpic
2) Twitter the url for your photograph to @SatScenes
3) Watch for the next post on Twitter Blog to see a great set of all the photographs together.

I’m looking forward to seeing your scenes!