A woman with petrol in her veins (read UPDATE)

• 
• 

As next Sunday is International Woman’s Day, we will introduce you to one of history’s female businesswoman: Louise Sarazin. In 1887 her husband Edouard had entered negotiations with Emile Levassor to build Gottlieb Daimler’s engines in France. Edouard died before the talks could be completed, but Louise was well acquainted with the negotiations. Together with Levassor she visited Daimler in Cannstatt and in 1889 this meeting resulted in an agreement in which Louise Sarazin got the rights to commercialize the Daimler patents in France. She then -for a percentage- assigned the rights over to the company Panhard & Levassor. After that, the relationship between Louise Sarazin and Emile Levassor deepened, and in 1890 they married. Emile Levassor died in September 1896 during the Paris–Marseille–Paris race, but is still known in France as the ‘father of the automobile’. However, it was Louise Sarazin who believed in the success of the automobile and who introduced Emile Levassor to Gottlieb Daimler... thus paving the way for the introduction of the automobile in France. (With thanks to Daimler AG)

Update by Malcolm Jeal: “Emile Levassor died in 1897. Whilst it is correct that he had an accident in the 1896 Paris-Marseille-Paris race, no direct link has ever been established between the accident and his death 7 months later.”

Kommentar abgeben...