What Was The First Ever Petrol Station?

Infrastructure is a fundamental aspect of making any kind of transportation viable, from the electrified railway to airfields and airports.

In the case of petrol and diesel cars, one of the biggest reasons why the internal combustion engine took off and became dominant in an early motoring industry that looked at one point to be electrically driven is because of the freedom the petrol station provides.

These fuel and oil tank installations allow a car with a limited operating range to, providing there are enough stations between the point of departure and the destination, travel virtually anywhere, and the very first petrol station was used as part of a vital journey to prove the use of the car itself.

Whilst Karl Benz received a lot of credit for creating the Patent Motorwagen in 1886, his wife Bertha was, in fact, the first person to ever take a long-distance journey in an automobile, travelling from her home in Mannheim to her mother’s house in Pforzheim.

She took her two teenaged sons with her but notably did not let Mr Benz know about this trip, primarily to make a point to her husband about the potential of his invention despite its relative failure at the time.

Before Mrs Benz’s 121-mile journey, most driven journeys were little more than a few feet, designed to test the principle of the automobile, often with engineering assistants a short distance away to help repair any of the inevitable issues with these early engines.

On the journey, she ended up proving inadvertently why petrol would be preferred over electricity over the next century, as she had a few issues with the car that needed solving on the way.

In Bruschal, one of the chains snapped, so she asked a local blacksmith to help, whilst in Bauschlott the brake linings needed replacing.

Bertha’s ingenuity came into play as well, as she cleaned a blocked fuel pipe with a hatpin, and would insulate a wayward wire with a garter.

However, the most fascinating part was when she went to a chemist to buy Ligroin, a petroleum solvent that was used as the fuel for the car, which technically made it the first petrol station in the world.

As she expected, the journey received a lot of attention, her feedback led to improvements to the car, and by 1899 Benz became the largest carmaker in the world.