"The Cadillac car will kill no more men if we can help it. We're going to develop a fool-proof device... "
Henry M. Leiand, founder Cadillac Automobile Co.
Before the invention of the starter motor, the motorist had to indulge in some energetic "cranking" of the engine with a starting handle before it would fire. Sometimes the engine would misfire, Jerking the handle violently and injuring the hapless motorist.
Automatic starters had been proposed some years before—a patent for what turned out to be an impractical solution was granted to Clyde J. Coleman in 1903. Research into a practical system was revisited with some urgency when a friend of Cadillac's founder, Henry Leiand, died following an injury sustained when a starting handle, thrown by a backfiring engine, struck him in the face. Cadillac called upon Charles F.
Kettering's (1876-1958) company, Dayton Engineering Laboratories (DELCO)—an entity set up specifically to exploit Kettering's already proven success in automotive electrical design—for help.
Kettering realized that an automobile starter motor need only operate successfully for a few seconds at a time, so it need not be impossibly large. The unit he developed was a combined starter motor and generator. First installed in a Cadillac on February 27, 1911, it incorporated an over-run clutch and reduction gear and could thus provide enough torque to crank the engine quickly and disengage once the engine fired. Car ownership was revolutionized.
