Have a good trip: the achievements of trailblazers of road and rail

The Benz patent motorcar
With a speed of 10 mph, one hp and a fuel consumption of 20 liters of gasoline per 60 miles, the legendary patent motorcar by Carl Benz was the first automobile with an internal combustion engine. On July 3, 1886, Benz carried out the first test drive of his innovation. Four months later, his patent was approved.

Classic rear-wheel drive: The rear of the patent motorcar with its single-cylinder 4-stroke engine. Cylinder capacity: 59 cubic inches (964 cm³). Benz designed the flywheel to lie horizontally. He worried that if the flywheel was vertical, the steering and stability of the vehicle would be compromised by the gyroscopic effect when going around tight corners.

At first, Carl Benz only received ridicule and scorn for his invention—at best, disbelief. Nobody at the time predicted that his patent motorcar would be a technological breakthrough. Sales were slow in the first few years, especially since the invention was more expensive, heavy, and cumbersome than the bicycles of that time. The patent motorcar wasn't faster, either.

Carl Benz (3rd from right) in 1894 with his family: the automobile pioneer had 5 children with his wife, Bertha Benz, who played a significant role in the success of the patent motorcar. In 1888, she took the first cross-country journey—66 miles from Mannheim to Pforzheim and back—with her sons Eugen and Richard without her husband's knowledge. This was the first practical test over a long stretch. Incidentally, she bought gasoline from a pharmacy at the time, as this was the only place where it was possible to buy materials such as gasoline or kerosene.

Here's the 81-year-old Carl Benz on his patent motorcar in 1925—by this time he'd long since received the recognition he'd been hoping for. He had already donated the first model to the Deutsches Museum in Munich in 1906. In 1926, his company Benz Co. merged with the Daimler Motors Corporation to create Daimler-Benz. Carl Benz died in 1929.

The Tropfenwagen
Engineer Eduard Rumpler developed this streamlined sedan in 1921, and attracted a lot of attention with it at the Berlin Motor Show. The main points in Rumpler's car's favour were that it had the "lowest fuel consumption" and the "highest efficiency". An aerodynamic wind tunnel test in 1979 showed a resistance value of just 0.28 cD—better than many modern vehicles.

Rumpler called his innovation the Tropfenwagen, or "teardrop car," because when viewed from above, its shape is reminiscent of a drop of water. Despite initially positive feedback and a lot of praise, the Tropfenwagen did not sell well. Over time, the car turned out to have major drawbacks, including engine issues and flapping front wheels.

No more than 100 models had been built by the time production stopped in 1925. The Tropfenwagen was ready-made for the big screen: in the final scene of Fritz Lang's big movie "Metropolis," 2 Tropfenwagens were burnt at the stake, as they embodied an evolution in technology which Lang considered terrifying.

The Protos
Around the world not quite in 80 days, but in 165: On February 12, 1908, the Berlin-built Protos set off on a rally around the world, one of them driven by German Lieutenant Colonel Hans Koeppen. Six cars in total from Germany, France, Italy, and the US took part in this ambitious journey. During the era of imperialist superpowers, this was a prestigious event of national importance. The route took them from the starting point in New York to the West Coast, from Seattle by ship to Vladivostok, and across Siberia via Omsk, Berlin, and Brussels to Paris…

After 13,222 miles and 5.5 months, Koeppen was the first participant to reach the finish, 4 days before the American George Schuster. But Koeppen couldn't celebrate this victory for long. Because he had traveled 93 miles by rail with his Protos in the US, he was given a time penalty of 14 days. That was still good enough for second place.

The "Puffing Billy"
The Puffing Billy was the first usable steam locomotive, built in 1814 by English pit director William Hedley (1779–1843) and used in a coalmine in Wylam upon Tyne. Locomotives such as the Puffing Billy were typical in the Age of Industrialization. Freight railroads mainly traveled to coal mines, steel mills, and textile mills.

Puffing Billy was a faithful and reliable helper. It tirelessly pulled up to 10 coal wagons to and from the pit in northeast England for 47 years—though at the very leisurely pace of just under 5 miles per hour. It was as fast as a stagecoach. But it only received the nickname "Puffing Billy," after its inventor William Hedley, once it retired, when it arrived in today's Science Museum in London.

When Billy came to Munich
During a visit to the London Museum in 1876, the 23-year-old Oskar von Miller came up with the German equivalent for the Puffing Billy. In 1904, 2 years before the foundation stone of the Deutsches Museum was laid, Oskar von Miller commissioned the German Railway Administration in Berlin to create a replica of the Puffing Billy for 18,000 gold marks. That's equivalent to almost $620,000 US dollars today. The ceremonial handover to the board of the Deutsches Museum took place on October 23, 1906. Here we can see a demonstration in front of a school group in 1939.

The first electric locomotive
While trying to cope with the ever-increasing flow of commuters on their way to factories, horse-drawn carriages and railroads in the 19th century soon reached maximum capacity. Steam locomotives, however, were too dirty and noisy. After discovering the dynamoelectric principle in 1866, Werner Siemens started developing an electric locomotive. He presented his innovation at the Berlin Trade Fair in 1879.

Power was supplied via the rails. The motorcar and train driver (left) pulled 3 coaches with 6 passengers each on a 984-foot circular path through the exhibition park. It was an overwhelming success. In a letter to his brother Carl, Werner Siemens happily wrote: "Our electric railroad has now become a great spectacle here. Indeed, it is doing better than we expected. For a few hours each day, around 1,000 people are transported for 20 pennies each for charitable purposes, with 20 to 25 people on each journey. The speed is about the same as a horse-drawn railroad. In fact, something can now be built based on this!

One of the latest innovations in the history of mobility and in the collection of the Deutsches Museum is the pioneering vehicle "Firefly" by the US-American company Waymo - one of the first autonomously driving cars in the world. The Fireflys, which served as test vehicles between 2015 and 2017, completed a distance of 32 million kilometres without a human driver during this period. Equipped with an electric motor and sensors in the roof capsule for 360° scans (radar, lidar, cameras and microphones) as well as specially developed software, the Firefly is a pioneering model that achieved a maximum range of 40 kilometres with a top speed of 40 km/h.