Karl Benz was born on November 26, 1844. His full name is Karl Friedrich Michael Vaillant. He was born in Karlsruhe, Germany to his father Johann George Benz and mother Josephine Vaillant. When Karl was two years old, his father was killed in a railway accident, and his name was changed to Karl Friedrich Benz to remember of his father.
Despite living near poverty, his mother tried to give him a good education. Benz attended a near-by grammar school in Karlsruhe and was a very good student. In 1853, at the age of nine he started at the scientifically oriented Lyzeum. Next he studied in the Poly-Technical University under the instruction of a man named Ferdinand Redtenbacher.
Benz had originally focused his studies on locksmithing, but eventually followed his father's steps toward loco-motive engineering. On September 30, 1860, at age fifteen he passed the entrance exam for mechanical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe where he later attended. He was graduated on July 9, 1864.
During these years, while riding his bicycle he started to envision concepts for a vehicle that would eventually become the horseless carriage. He ended up inventing a motor-wagon called the "Benz Patent Motorwagen" in 1886.
Following his formal education, Benz had seven years of professional training in several companies, but did not fit well in any of them. The training started in Karlsruhe with two years of different jobs in a mechanical engineering company. He then moved to Mannheim to work as a draftsman and designer in a scales factory. In 1868 he went to Pforzheim to work for a bridge building company called Gebr�der Benckiser Eisenwerke und Maschinenfabrik. Finally, he went to Vienna for a short period to work at an iron construction company.
