The Automotive Dream “One man and his dream had not simply left the world with an engine and four wheels; Henry Ford and his Model T had influenced people's everyday lives - where they lived, how they spent their leisure time, even how they viewed themselves.” - Gary...
The Electric Starter
Written by Irina
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From the Crank to the Electric Starter
“Notwithstanding the hilarious grandiosity of marketing materials from the early 20th century, many people believe the starter motor was the single car part that most transformed the automobile from a luxury fascination to something everyone could own and use regularly.” – Lee Procida for Shop Press
Looking at the cars in the Demers Car Collection, you can see some that have a crank at the front or on the side of the vehicle. Others have a hole where a crank could be. Today, to start your car, you either push a button or turn the key in the ignition, but there was a time when you had to crank your car to get it started! This week, we’ll delve into the evolution of the ignition. We’ll have a look at the incident that prompted the adoption of the electric starter, and Charles Kettering’s contribution to it.
How to Start a Horseless Carriage
When the automobile was in its infancy, there were many ways to start it. Although the crank was probably the most common way to start a petrol-powered car, it wasn’t the only one. Before the First World War, steam-powered and electric-powered cars also shared the road. A variety of mechanisms were invented and tested, some even used springs and gunpowder to start the engine. Since petrol-powered cars took over after the First World War, this article will focus on their development.
The majority of petrol-powered cars in the early days had hand cranks. To start a car with this mechanism, you had to crank it hard enough to get the engine’s pistons moving. To do so, you had to first, prime the engine, adjust the throttle and choke, and time the ignition. Then, using a handle, either permanently affixed to the crankshaft, or a removable one, you had to turn the crankshaft to start the engine. About a turn would be needed if all the conditions were satisfied, the engine would then be running on its own and the handle could be removed.
Bigger engine capacities meant bigger resistance against the handle. Starting a car this way was a difficult and sometimes dangerous task. The physical challenge was so great that a lot of women simply didn’t have the upper-body strength to do it. This is why electric cars were popular with female drivers since they didn’t require hand cranking to get started.
The Incident
Cranking an engine could be so difficult that it could lead to numerous injuries. Indeed, if an engine backfired, it would send the crankshaft and handle backward unexpectedly. Although a broken wrist or arm could be common, a tragic death sparked the desire in one influential character to find a better solution.
As the story goes, in 1910, Henry Leland’s friend, Byron Carter, tried to help a woman who stalled in the middle of a bridge. She couldn’t restart the car herself. When Carter tried, the engine backfired. The backfiring sent the heavy, metal crank spinning and it hit Carter in the face. The incident resulted in a broken jaw that eventually got infected. Carter died soon after this injury due to complications. At the time, Leland was at the helm of Cadillac, a company that he created. This tragedy weighed on Leland, because Carter was a friend, but also because the troublesome car was a Cadillac.
Kettering and his Patent
It is said that Leland vouched that a Cadillac car would never take another life in such a way and approached Charles Kettering to find a solution. Kettering was an engineer and inventor. He developed an electrical starter integral to the engine that would spin to provide a spark for ignition and act as a generator. In essence, an electric motor cranks the engine instead of human labor. This system is similar to the one that we use in petrol-powered cars today. The electrical power needed comes from a rechargeable battery. Compared to electric cars of the time, Kettering’s invention offered some advantages including its reasonable size. Most importantly, it eliminated the need for cranking.
This new starting system was first used in a Cadillac in 1912. The 1912 Cadillac Model 30 was not only the first car to have Kettering’s engine that didn’t need cranking, but it also had some of the first electric headlights. With these advanced features, Cadillac was setting the standard for automotive manufacturing yet again. Marketed as “The Car That Has No Crank,” it doubled Cadillac’s sales. The invention of the electric starter is also believed to have contributed to the demise of early electric cars.
More on Kettering
A U.S. patent was awarded to Kettering for this invention. Some argue that it is one of the most significant patents awarded in the United States as this invention allowed women to drive petrol-powered cars, which in turn contributed to their emancipation. Although this is Kettering’s best-known invention, he worked on many others in the automotive field as well as in medicine. Kettering can also be a controversial character due to other inventions that he worked on, notably leaded-gasoline and Freon. Nonetheless, his inventions had a lasting impact and changed society.
To note, although electric ignition became standard quite fast, the option to hand crank a car remained for decades. Many cars from the 1920s and 1930s still had a hole for the crank in the front of the grille in case the electric starter failed. And a few cars had that option many decades later.
To note #2, the way this system works is by closing the circuit between the starter and the engine and most commonly, this is done by turning the key in the ignition. Today, this can also be done by pushing a button.
What Now?
Realizing that cars didn’t always have keys made me ponder on the likelihood of having your car stolen. How could you ensure that your car would still be there when you came back from an errand. But then again, this was a time when cars were much more complex to drive than cars are today. Just to get it started was a whole process of calibrating air flow and oil. I guess a car wasn’t that easy to steal! Next week on the blog, we’ll have a look at the first Cadillac that set the standard in automotive history: the Cadillac Model A.
