The invention of the automobile

On January 29, 1986 Karl Benz filed a patent for his most important invention, a three-wheeled >>vehicle driven by a gas engine<<, in Mannheim.
In the same year, Gottlieb Daimler completet his motorized carriage in Canstatt - the world's first two automobiles had come into being.
Quite indenpendently of each other, Benz and Daimler had realized their vision - the dream of vehicle that generates its motive power it self.

This called for an engine which had to be sufficiently small and light to be accommdated in the vehicle, yet powerful enough to drive the vehicle.
However, such engine did not exist - until Daimler and his collaborator Wilhelm Maybach invented the world's first high-speed gasoline engine in 1883. They installed a further developed version of this prototype, the so called Grandfather Clock, in the range of very different vehicles, among them a carriage - the motorized carriage. With his patent motorcar, Benz, by contrast, presented the first autonomous automobile with integrated chassis and engine.