Hello there. Come on in. You found our household
in a something of a state of excitement. Even
the fairies who live on the library shelves
are aflutter. We have now been living a fairly
isolated life for a very long time. I have
asthma and have had to be careful but tomorrow
we are hitting the road. We are not dashing
to the pub or to a restaurant but to our kids
and grandchildren where we plan to go crazy
and eat homemade pizza together. Who would
have thought I would ever have found that
the most exciting thing I could imagine? I’m
being ridiculous. I’ve washed the car for
the occasion and it reminded me of this old
book I have. It’s in Danish but the paintings
need no translation. It contains marvellous
imagery from the earliest automobiles. There
is an ad from the French company de Dion showing
the excitement of a family outing in one of
these new-fangled contraptions. Inexplicably
one of the women in the picture is breastfeeding
while the open top vehicle speeds along at
a heady ten miles per hour. The truly French
touch to this piece of art is that the speeding
car manages to frighten a white faced clown
and his horse who are presumably on their
way to work at the circus.
It was on July 3, 1886 that the German automotive
engineer, Karl Benz officially unveiled the
Benz Patent-Motorwagen, the world’s first
purpose-built automobile. I mentioned back
in April how this piece of history leaves
out the important part his wife Bertha played.
I did not mention that the workshop where
he made the Benz Patent-Motorwagon was really
hers. He had been in financial trouble with
an unreliable business partner. Before she
married him Bertha took part of her dowry
and bought out the business so that she gained
not just a husband but a financial interest
in getting him on the road. She made the investment
before the wedding because once she was a
married woman she lost her legal power to
invest in anything. Why put a ring on a woman’s
finger and she loses the ability to count!
There had been attempts at motorizing transport
before but Karl’s car was the first automobile
entirely designed to generate its own power.
It wasn’t just a horse carriage with an
engine added. He began selling them commercially
but there were some niggling problems. For
example, the Motorwagen had only two gears
and it needed help to climb hills which is
not ideal for a car. Bertha sorted it out.
One August morning in 1888 she put her two
teenage sons in the new car and set off to
do something unheard of – travel more than
thirty miles in a car. She didn’t tell Karl
and nor did she get permission from the authorities
although who needed to know I have no idea.
Her plan was to drive from their home in Mannheim
to her old hometown of Pforzheim. She could
check out the car, get some publicity to help
sales and the kids could see grandma. It was
the world's first ever automobile road trip.
Along the way she sorted various technical
and mechanical problems, invented a couple
of things and arrived at her mother’s in
time for supper. She sent a telegram to Karl
letting him know he would need to get his
own dinner.
Bertha’s design for improvements to the
car are all parts which today we take for
granted. I’m not sure why cars and certainly
their inner workings is so often seen as a
male preserve. As it happens I like cars and
drive a very fast, five litre Mustang. I bought
it partly because the salesman kept trying
to show me tiny cars for old ladies and I
got annoyed. I don’t drive it often because
of the environment but I love the sound of
the engine. I know a bit or two about how
it works but no one ever imagines such a thing.
How many times have I had a boy mechanic look
at my car motor and suck on his teeth as he
prepares to elaborate on my presumed and profound
ignorance. It’s why I admire Patrice Banks,
an American engineer turned mechanic, who
in 2016 founded the Girls Auto Clinic. It’s
a car repair center in Philadelphia where
you can get your car serviced and your nails
done at the same time. It’s staffed by and
focuses on women. She also teaches workshops
to help women learn the basics of car repair
and maintenance and turn them into ‘sheCANics’.
How Bertha Benz would have loved her.
Patrice is the way forward although seeing
behind you was also a woman’s idea. Check
out the inventor of the rear view mirror online
and website after website will tell you it
was a racing car driver called Ray Harroun
in 1911. This overlooks a marvellous booklet
written two year before by Dorothy Levitt
entitled "The Woman and the Car: A Chatty
Little Handbook for all Women Who Motor or
Who Want to Motor. " In it Dorothy made helpful
suggestions on everything from what to wear,
to adjusting the footbrake and changing a
spark plug. She spends a lot of time talking
about the need to bring along a mirror. "The
mirror should be fairly large to be really
useful, and it is better to have one with
a handle…you will find it useful to have
handy, not only for personal use, but to occasionally
hold up to see what’s behind you.” Yep,
Dorothy Levitt had invented the rear-view
mirror but hardly anyone gives her credit.
Dorothy is not alone in being left out of
history. It has happened to women for generations
and I have tried in these small talks to shine
a light on what half the population did or
thought which often has not been deemed worthy
of attention. I always knew there were many
left out but it has really made me focus on
the vast size of the hole in general education.
Today one of the main sources for history
content which people access is Wikipedia.
This online encyclopedia has more than 53
million articles and attracts 1.5 billion
unique visitors per month. Unfortunately it
is also a place of deep bias and gender inequality.
The main problem, particularly on the English
Wiki pages, is that the majority of the work
being inputed is by men who have their own
interests. The estimated number of women editors
is anywhere between 9% and 20% and this is
reflected in both the content and the language.
It’s not just that women aren’t being
inputed either. In some case they are actively
being taken out.
A good example is Donna Strickland, optical
physicist at the University of Waterloo in
Canada. Former President and fellow of the
Optical Society whose work has myriad applications
in eye surgery, chemistry, industrial laser
machining, and biology and medicine in general.”
In 2018, someone submitted an article about
Strickland to Wikipedia which did not have
a page for her. The article was refused by
a volunteer editor because they said Strickland
lacked the necessary criteria to be included.
She wasn’t important enough to be notable.
She finally got her page later that year.
Two days after she won the Nobel Prize for
physics.
That surely can’t be what it takes to make
a women notable? As of 23 June 2020 only 18.50%
of Wikipedia’s biographies were of women.
Whole swathes of the world are being excluded
and if we don’t do something about it then
this present capturing of history will become
accepted as unchangeable fact. Here is the
thing - we can all do something about it.
Sign up and start editing Wikipedia. Every
voice can make a difference. It’s not that
hard. Capture the stories of the women who
you come across or who are just in your life
and may otherwise go unnoticed in the passage
of time.
At the beginning of lockdown I first sat here
thumbing through one of my many books. Having
never posted anything online, I did not know
then that Alex Bell, Debbie and I would go
on to create 54 of these videos and enjoy
the company of a small but beautiful community
of like-minded people across the world. I
also did not know I would be adding to these
shelves. As it happens, today, phew, I’ve
just finished writing a book inspired by my
history research. It’s an almanack marking
a different woman of note for every day of
the year. It’s going to be called Toksvig’s
Almanack – I have no idea how we thought
of the title – and it will be published
in October. All of you who have commented
and encouraged – please know you are partly
responsible for the book’s creation. I have
loved hearing from you and I am sorry if anyone
feels I am letting them down. I am stopping
now because to be completely honest – I
need a break. Debbie needs a break and so
does the amazing Alex. We have all worked
pretty much every day for more than a 100
days and if I’ve learned anything then it’s
to take another look at work life balance.
I’m going to get in my car and zoom off
to be just a mum and a grandma which is also
plenty. Thank you for watching. Please - Take
care. Be kind.
