Charles Kettering and the Self-Starting Machine
Near Dayton, Ohio
Before Charles Kettering's invention reached the public in nineteen twelve, starting a gasoline automobile required physical strength and a certain tolerance for danger. You cranked a handle protruding from the front of the engine. If the engine kicked back, which it did, the handle could break your wrist or your arm. Women were often told they could not drive. The crank was the reason.
Kettering grew up in Ohio and came to Dayton to work at the National Cash Register Company, where he improved the electric motor in NCR's machines. In nineteen oh nine he left to work full time on automotive problems. With a partner, he formed the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, abbreviated as Delco, on the east side of the city.
The Delco team built an integrated electrical system that performed three functions at once: it started the engine with an electric motor, it provided the spark for ignition, and it powered the lights. The system appeared in the nineteen twelve Cadillac and spread through the industry within a few years. The crank disappeared. The automobile market expanded dramatically as a result.
Kettering sold Delco to the predecessor of General Motors in nineteen sixteen for two and a half million dollars. He went on to accumulate one hundred eighty-six patents, including work on leaded gasoline, Freon refrigerant, diesel locomotive engines, and early cancer treatment research. He died in Dayton in nineteen fifty-eight. The city of Kettering, just south of Dayton, is named for him. So is a cancer research center in New York. Not a bad result for a man who started by eliminating a crank.
