If Germany today is widely considered to build the best (or at least some of the best) cars, it is because of their long history of automaking. Several experiments in other parts of Europe successfully propelled carriages by attached motors, but only German engineers thought to design a carriage specifically for motor power, and of those Germans Karl Benz was the first to patent his work and create, in effect, the world’s first true automobile.

On this day, July 3, in 1886 Karl Benz debuted his Patent Motorwagen, a combination of a large tricycle (which Benz was particularly fond of) with a four-stroke engine.

To publicize their new invention, Karl’s wife Bertha Benz decided to take a long-distance road-trip with her children two sons Richard and Eugen, the first one ever done by car. The Benz Patent Motorwagen had a top speed of around 12 miles an hour, so it must have taken them a while to complete the 62 mile route from Mannheim to Pforzheim, but they did stop by to fill up with ligroin (a type of gasoline) along the way, making another world’s first — the filling of car at a gas station (which was really a pharmacy store.)