Cold Start
When Starting Your Car Could Kill You
In late 1908, Henry Leland, founder and president of Cadillac, received word that Byron Carter, a close friend and fellow automotive pioneer, had been killed in an auto accident. Leland was inconsolable. Not just because he lost a friend, but also because he had — indirectly — played a role in the man’s death.
Carter had been out driving on a chilly Michigan winter evening when he noticed a female driver stranded at the side of the road on Detroit’s Belle Isle Bridge. A crack auto mechanic and engineer, Carter stopped to assist the woman. While attempting to re-start the vehicle’s engine, Carter positioned himself at the front of the car and began vigorously turning the hand crank. As he did so, the engine backfired, causing the crank to spin backward and strike Carter in the jaw, shattering it. The injury didn’t kill Carter outright but a subsequent infection arising from the wound did. Leland wasn’t just distraught, he was also racked with guilt. The car that had backfired and killed his friend was a Cadillac.
Days later, Leland assembled his engineering team. After an emotional recounting of the accident, he concluded with a vow: “The Cadillac will kill no more men if we can help it.” Leland also charged his team with a mission: find a way to start engines without the need for a hand-turned crank.
Engine cranks weren’t unique to Cadillacs. They were used to start all vehicles at the time. But crank-starting engines was always an exhausting task and often downright dangerous. Broken wrists and other injuries resulting from backfires were common.
Cadillac engineers toiled relentlessly to find a solution. After months of work, they came up with a system to start engines using electricity, but the necessary equipment was far too cumbersome to be practical. They were stuck.
However, Leland wasn’t willing to throw in the towel. He became aware of a group of bright young Ohio engineers who worked at National Cash Register (NCR) by day, but spent their nights together in a barn tinkering with automobiles. Recognizing the future belonged to cars, the group believed there was a fortune to be made devising ways to improve the new but nascent contraptions. Known as the “Barn Gang,” the team was led by an ambitious 34-year-old electrical engineer named Charles F. Kettering, a man the rest of the group referred to as “Boss Ket.”
Leland contacted Kettering and told him about the device his team at Cadillac had developed. Then he finished with a pitch — if the Barn Gang could transform the unwieldy apparatus into a more workable solution, Leland would include the component in the production of all future Cadillacs. The deal might not make the members of the Barn Gang instantly wealthy, but it would establish the team as a credible engineering resource for the entire auto industry. Kettering took Leland up on his offer.
The challenge proved to be as grueling as crank starting a car itself. In order for the new starter to be integrated into his 1912 Cadillac models, Leland gave the Barn Gang a tight deadline. To meet the target, Boss Ket and his team devoted every spare moment to the task. Kettering even quit his job at NCR to make the project his sole focus. The undertaking became an obsession. As Kettering later put it, “They didn’t have a job so much as the job had them.”
Eventually, the Barn Gang’s hard work paid off. The team emerged from their leaky workspace with a solution surpassing all expectations. Rather than simply finding a better way to start an engine, Kettering’s team had developed an entirely new electrical system for automobiles. In addition to generating a spark for easy ignition at the push of a button, the system provided a steady flow of electricity to power a vehicle’s headlights and interior lighting — and even allowed the engine to recharge its own battery for the next start. Of course, the system was also small enough to be placed inside a car’s engine compartment alongside the engine.
As promised, an ecstatic Leland introduced the electric starter in all of his 1912 models, earning Cadillac and Kettering the prestigious Dewar Trophy for automobile advancement. What’s more, Leland nobly made the technology available to other automakers, sparking a dramatic increase in automobile production across the industry. Not only did the electric starter allow cars to be started more safely, it eliminated the physical aspect, making automobiles far more appealing to female drivers. In seeking to make his own cars safer, Henry Leland drove the entire auto industry forward.
Though his own name is somewhat forgotten today, Henry Leland was responsible for giving us two of the most prominent brands in automobile history. After selling his Cadillac brand and factory to General Motors, Leland would go on to form the Lincoln Motor Company. Leland initially founded Lincoln to make airplane engines for use by the Allies in World War I, but after the war the company retooled to focus on creating the luxury motorcars for which it is known for today.
By all rights, Leland’s name should be nearly as well-known as the other great Henry of automobile history, Ford. Alas, it was not to be. In fact, the two Henrys became bitter enemies after Ford Motor Company acquired Lincoln in 1922. Ford forced the 79-year-old Leland to resign from Lincoln, effectively ending Leland’s long and illustrious career. Having started America’s two great American luxury car brands and even helping save GM from bankruptcy, Leland died a decade later, somewhat underappreciated for his considerable contributions.
In terms of leaving a lasting legacy, Charles Kettering would fare better than Leland. But like Leland, Kettering’s accomplishments would be largely overshadowed by one of his contemporaries. In Kettering’s case, that man was the legendary Thomas Edison. After developing the electric starter, Boss Ket incorporated the Barn Gang as Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company or, as we know it today, Delco. Kettering eventually sold Delco to General Motors, staying on to head up GM’s distinguished research lab for 27 years.
Over his tenure, Kettering was instrumental in the invention of the diesel engine as well as the engine-driven electrical generator. Working in partnership with DuPont, Kettering also helped develop leaded gasoline to improve engine compression, Freon refrigerant and Duco lacquers and enamels, the first colored paints for automobiles.
Beyond his contributions to the auto industry, Kettering designed the first aerial missile used by the Allies in World War I, a motorized projectile dubbed the “Kettering Bug.” He also advanced medical technology, devising the first incubator for prematurely born infants and pioneering the use of magnetism in medical diagnosis (today’s “MRI” technology.) In total, Kettering would hold 186 U.S. patents, an impressive figure. Yet none would make a greater difference, especially in terms of protecting human lives and health, than the electric self-starter for the automobile.
Unfortunately, not all automakers were as devoted as Henry Leland to making cars safer. After the electric starter, the industry largely stopped introducing innovations to safeguard motorists. It wasn’t because engineers were running out of ideas to improve vehicle safety. It was because car companies decided most improvements were simply too costly. Facing fierce competition to sell cars, automakers were more preoccupied with their own survival than that of their customers. For decades after the invention of the electric starter, safety would take a backseat to sales.
