Classic stories

...death accelerated the invention of the electric starter motor

BEFORE 1920, most engines were started by means of a crank handle and, on some vehicles, this was quite easy. Others, meanwhile, required sweat and sometimes even blood. There was a secret to starting an engine with a crank; if you didn’t grip the handle the correct way, or if the handle rotated with the engine when the latter started, you could be injured or killed. In fact, the invention of the rst successful starter motor was due to a fatality.

In 1910, a young woman had stalled the engine of her Cadillac. Stuck on the side of the road on a cold winter’s day, eventually Byron Carter, a prominent businessman also driving a Cadillac, turned up to help. He tried to start the engine but forgot to retard the ignition timing on the steering hub-mounted lever, a common feature in those days. Unfortunately, the engine back- red, causing the crank handle to y off and break Carter’s jaw. Ironically, two Cadillac engineers in another Caddy happened to be driving past and they stopped to help. The two managed to get the car started and take the wounded Carter off to the hospital, where he died a few weeks later following complications.

Cadillac’s chief engineer, Henry Leland, whom we introduced on this page last month, was upset when he learnt about the incident. He called his engineers together and exclaimed: “Those vicious cranks! I won’t have Cadillacs hurting people that way.” He then asked three engineers to drop everything and design a suitable starting system. They came up with starter motor, but it was bulky and heavy, as this was the only way they could engineer it so as not to overheat.

The motor was unsuitable for automotive use, but Leland wasn’t ready to give up just yet. After some enquiries, he learnt that Charles Kettering (pictured), a young electrical engineer working for the National Cash Register Company, had designed a small electric motor to convert the company’s products from manual to electric operation. Leland asked Kettering to design a suitable starter and the result was something altogether smaller and more practical. Kettering had realised that the motor could be made smaller than big industrial units, because it was needed to operate only for 20-second spurts. It was just continuous operation that would cause it to overheat.

Kettering then teamed up with Cadillac’s engineers to develop coil ignition, electric lights and a voltage-control unit that prevented overcharging the battery. The 1912 Cadillac was the rst car to have all these electrical components together under the bonnet.