While Carl Benz is widely regarded as the inventor of the car – having registered his “vehicle with gas-engine drive” under patent number 37435 with the Berlin Patent Office in 1886 – his creation, known as the Benz Patent Motorwagen and already on sale a year before the patent application was filed, looks nothing like what one imagines a car to be. It featured only three wheels, making it essentially a powered tricycle, and its single front wheel, used for steering, was controlled much like a boat’s rudder.
