HomeMediaMercedes-Benz puts its archives online

Mercedes-Benz puts its archives online

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Among images on the new website is this one of the 1938 540K Streamliner, which showed a Cd of 0.36 when put in the wind tunnel last year |Mercedes-Benz Classic photos
Among images on the new website is this one of the 1938 540K Streamliner, which showed a Cd of 0.36 when put in the wind tunnel last year |Mercedes-Benz Classic photos

You don’t have to travel to Germany and visit the Mercedes-Benz museum to view the history of the world’s oldest automaker. Mercedes-Benz Classic has launched a website to share documents, photographs and the rest of its archives with anyone who visits https://mercedes-benz-publicarchive.com, or Public M@RS, as the site has been nicknamed.

“M@RS” is shorthand for Multimedia Archive and Research System, Mercedes’ internal title for internal web-based archives launched 15 years ago, though access from outside the company was restricted to registered researches and journalists.

Sales brochures are among artifacts that can be viewed on the new website
Sales brochures are among artifacts that can be viewed on the new website

The site has been expanded, and continues to grow, and now is open to anyone without the need of a password.

“Fascinating history consists of exciting stories. This is especially true of the history of Daimler AG, which dates back to the invention of the automobile by Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler in 1886,” Michael Bock, head of Mercedes-Benz Classic and Customer Center said in a news release. “Our aim is to bring this resource even closer to the general public.

“With Public M@RS, therefore, we are providing information from our unique brand, company and technology history in the form of an extensive database.”

The Mercedes archives were started in 1936 with administrative order No. 1145 from the Daimler-Benz Aktiengesellschaft to engineer Max Rauck, who was told to “collect and examine our historical literature and photographic material for the purpose of establishing and managing an historical archive.”

Much of what he and his successors have collected already is online, with more being added.

In its initial stage of development for public access, the focus of the portal is the passenger car, with vehicle portraits, technical data and illustrations presented in five historical chapters: Benz & Cie. to 1926, Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft and Mercedes to 1926, Mercedes-Benz from 1926 to 1945, Mercedes-Benz from 1946 and Maybach from 2002.

 

Larry Edsall
Larry Edsall
A former daily newspaper sports editor, Larry Edsall spent a dozen years as an editor at AutoWeek magazine before making the transition to writing for the web and becoming the author of more than 15 automotive books. In addition to being founding editor at ClassicCars.com, Larry has written for The New York Times and The Detroit News and was an adjunct honors professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

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