THE FIRST FORD assembled in December 1902 had batteries twelve of them two sets of six each. Each battery was a 1.5 volt dry cell battery intended to make doorbells ring. Wired in series they produced 9 volts enough to produce the spark at the spark plug. The second set was carried for use when the first set wore down and they wore down quickly since they were not rechargeable.

There were no headlights of course nor stop lights no dome light no parking lights no fog lights no back up lights no map lights no light in the glove compartment no light in either the engine compartment or the trunk no oil pressure or water temperature warning lights and if there had been a speedometer it would have been visible only in the daylight for there was no light for that either. Neither were there electrical windows a cigarette lighter power seats an electrically operated antenna or for that matter a radio. And the car had to be cranked by hand because there was no electric starter either.

This is not so much of a list of handy conveniences produced by Detroit’s inventive genius as it is a list of things we’ve grown used to on cars that depend on a usually black oblong object hidden from sight in the engine compartment the storage battery.

Automobiles use lead acid batteries developed by the Frenchman Gaston Plante in 1859 but batteries go much farther back than that. Some historians and archaeologists are absolutely convinced that the Parthians used electric batteries as far back as 250 244 R.C. to make gold plated jewelry. We have some of the jewelry and we have (depending on whose opinion you listen to) some reasonably convincing evidence that the gold was placed on the base metal of the jewelry by the use of the flow of electricity between two cathodes in an acid bath. When an electric current flows from a positive cathode to a negative cathode it carries with it molecules of the positive cathode and deposits them on the negative cathode. If the positive cathode is gold for example a layer of gold will be deposited on the negative cathode.

Since we have the gold plated jewelry and what could have been parts of a battery it is a simple statement of fact to some highly regarded scholars that the Parthians understood batteries (and thus the theory of electricity) and put batteries and electrical energy to use in making jewelry.

Some equally prestigious scholars suggest that the others don’t know what they’re talking about and that the credit for inventing the battery goes to Alessandro Volta who came up with one in 1792 and had the volt named after him for his trouble.

We think of the word “battery” to mean anything that stores electrical energy but that’s not technically correct. Something that stores electrical energy is called a cell; two or more cells form a battery.

The first cell was furthermore called a pile because it was a pile of dissimilar materials. Volta took a disc of silver (about the size of a half dollar) and next to it he placed a slightly smaller disc of cloth (or paper) soaked in a saline solution and next to that disc a disc of zinc. Another silver disc touched the zinc disc then another disc of salt water soaked cloth then another disc of zinc and so on for a pile about a foot tall, if a wire was connected to the top of the Volta pile and to the bottom a substantial amount of current flowed between them.

Volta wasn’t really sure what to do with his pile and for a long time far more attention was paid to it by snake oil salesmen and the like who for a price would permit eager people to grab both ends of the wire and get shocked. But Sir Humphry Davy took Volta’s pile to his laboratory and with it performed the first electrolysis (separation into elements) of molten salts; the isolation of the alkali metals; and the first carbon arc which was the passage through the air of an electrical current between two carbon poles. This was obviously a new form of heat intense heat applied where it was wanted (now called carbon arc welding) and quite possibly a whole new source of light because the electric arc between the carbon poles was brilliant. By 1833 Michael Faraday could publish The Laws of Electrolysis. Fourteen years later in Milan Ohio Thomas Alva Edison was born. No man has changed the world for the better more than this Native American genius. He had three months of formal education in Port Huron Michigan and then went to work to support himself as a newspaper boy on the railroad. He was then twelve years of age.

By the time he was thirteen he had taught himself the Morse code and how to operate a railroad telegraph key. Since no one wanted to entrust a thirteen year old with that much responsibility he solved the problem by becoming the fastest most accurate telegrapher around in the belief that performance not age is what matters. From the time he was fifteen he had just about his choice of telegrapher’s jobs.

In 1868 at twenty one he was issued his first patent for an electric vote recorder which he felt would be of material assistance in speeding the operations of government. (One hundred and five years later for the session beginning in 1.973 the U. S. Congress finally installed such a device.)

During the next nine years he invented the stock ticker vastly improved telegraphic systems and the forerunner of the office duplicating machine. During 1877 78 he invented the “carbon transmitter” which converted sound waves into electrical energy and the reverse. Alexander Graham Bell polished this invention and came up with the telephone.

In the same year Edison applied for a patent for a “phonograph or speaking machine. The records were round but the principle of undulations in a groove reproducing sounds is the same used in the latest four channel ultrahigh fidelity phonograph recordings today.

He next invested $40000 and fourteen to sixteen hours a day six and seven days a week into the incandescent lamp.

On October 21 1879 Edison succeeded in getting a loop of carbonized cotton thread to glow for 40 hours inside a sealed glass bulb. The light bulb was born. Two years later he invented motion pictures but it is the light bulb which has an application here.

Until Edison’s light bulb there really wasn’t much of a demand for electricity. Aside from inventors in their laboratories and carnival operators needing a few volts to give their customers a thrilling shock who needed it?

The only real demand for electricity was to make telegraph systems work and these were powered by wet cell storage batteries. The current generated was a result of the chemical reaction between the acid and the metal. This was adequate for the amount of power required to send a telegraph message impulse down the wires. Every telegraph station had a room the size of a closet for the batteries. In large central message centers whole floors of buildings would be filled with batteries.

It took a good deal of current to keep the carbonized cotton thread glowing in Edison s glass bulb and batteries were obviously not going to be able to provide it. Scientists had long known that it was possible to generate electricity with what was then called a dynamo. As early as 1831 Michael Faraday had generated power by rotating a copper disc edgewise between the poles of a horseshoe magnet.

The next year the Pixies generator (nothing to do with elves; the inventor was Hippolyte Pixii) was developed using wrapped wire armatures replacing the disc.

As Thomas Alva Edison had been experimenting with making some substance glow under electric current he had realized that a source of power more convenient than the battery was going to be necessary for his electric light and had in 1878 (a year before he made the first light bulb work) improved the efficiency of the already invented generator from 50 per cent to 90 per cent by making it bipolar.

In other words polar generators (north and south or plus and minus) could convert half of the energy applied to them into electrical energy. Edison’s improvement on the generator making it bipolar nearly doubled its efficiency; 90 per cent of the energy applied to a generator could be converted to electricity. He had then the source of electrical energy for his light bulb before he had the light bulb.

Three years after he had invented the light bulb (the improvements to it since have been of materials and technique not theory) he had invented the central power station system of making and delivering electric power and the era of electric light came to the world. Edison turned his genius toward improvement of the storage battery and the invention of motion pictures. Other men continued to improve electric generation systems. It was a question of technique then rather than of invention to come up with an electrical generation system small enough to be carried in an automobile and be powered by the automobile engine.

When Ford built his first car he used as we said before dry cell batteries because there were no readily available electric generators to provide the spark. Dry cell is really an inaccurate term. They’re dry only in the sense that the electrolyte (the aqueous liquid which permits the chemical reaction between the reacting metals) is either non spill able or immobilized or both.

The next step was the installation of a magneto a device which generated electric power when the engine was running. On the Ford (and most other cars) it was connected to the flywheel. As the flywheel turned electric power was generated.

There were a number of problems with this starting with the basic design. If the engine wasn’t running there just wasn’t any power. When headlights came along (equipped thanks to Mr. Edison with electric bulbs) they burned bright when the engine was running fast dimly when the engine was running slowly and not at all when the engine was stopped.

About 1909 a fascinating character named Charles Franklin Kettering came on the automotive scene. He’d worked his way through Ohio State University installing switchboards for the telephone company and on graduation went to work for the National Cash Register Company. The cash register had recendy burst onto the scene touted as the mechanical marvel of the era and incidentally a means to keep employees honest. They were enormous brass and steel machines which performed three functions: When the keys were pressed and most importantly the crank at the side revolved little figures would pop up announcing the amount of the sale; the amount of the sale would be printed on a roll of paper and simultaneously the cash drawer at the bottom of the machine would be opened.

It was a dandy invention with just one flaw. Turning the crank at the side of the machine to put all the wheels and gears into operation required a good bit of strength.

Sales girl’s especially in places like department stores and five and ten cent stores where there were sales every couple of minutes finished their shifts exhausted.

Kettering solved the problem by developing an electric motor that for just the brief period necessary to turn the gears developed sufficient power. It could not provide the quarter horsepower required to work the cash register continuously or for even much longer than the perhaps three seconds it took for the cash register to work. It was a tiny electric motor and would quickly heat up and burn out if it had to run for any length of time. But working for just three seconds at a time and with time to cool off between uses it worked just fine on National’s cash registers.

Kettering was friendly not romantically interested in just friendly with his boss’s secretary possibly because she was fascinated with an inventor. When she left National Cash Register to work for Henry Leland president of Cadillac they maintained their friendship. Kettering learned from her that Leland was dissatisfied with the ignition system of his car which he had already determined was going to be the “Standard of the World.” The 1909 Cadillac had a dual supply of electric energy.

The driver had access to both a half dozen dry cell batteries wired in series and to a magneto. He would start the engine (with a crank) getting his spark from the batteries. When the engine was running above a certain speed he could throw a switch and engage the magneto which would then provide the spark (Magnetos which work very well so long as engine speed is reasonably constant are still used in piston engine air craft.)

The trouble with the system was that the magneto would not provide adequate spark below a certain engine speed and this meant frequent replacement of the dry cell batteries. The dry cells would power the spark plugs (without use of the magneto) for no more than 200 miles.

Kettering devised an electrical circuit including a coil. In effect the coil stored up the energy from the dry cell batteries and released it in bursts rather than as a steady flow of power. This increased the life of the batteries tenfold.

Through his friend the secretary Kettering got his invention before Leland. Leland not only bought it on the spot but announced that the Cadillac Motor Car Company was just the place for a bright young man like Kettering.

Kettering’s boss at National Cash Register E. A. Deeds when he heard of the offer came up with a counteroffer that Kettering couldn’t refuse. Instead of offering him a grander title or more money with National Cash Register he offered to help set up Kettering in his own laboratory a separate business which would deal with all sorts of electrical problems. Deeds had a barn in Dayton Ohio which he turned over to Kettering and Kettering gathered a half dozen other bright young men around him and formed the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company. Since that was something of a mouthful and Kettering hated wasted effort of any kind it quickly became DELCO.

The 1910 Cadillac came out with Kettering’s coil circuit in it. In the same year Leland became emotionally involved in getting rid of the problem of the crank starter. A close friend like Leland a gentleman proud of that role stopped to assist a rare lady motorist in distress. As he cranked her stalled engine it backfired. The crank spun around hit him on the jaw broke it and he died of complications.

Leland was fully aware of the problems which had so far prohibited a practical self starter for automobiles. It was almost a law of physics. About five horsepower would be required to turn over an automobile engine to start it. A five horsepower electric motor was not only enormous (posing problems of where to mount it on the engine and within the confines of the engine compartment) but required a vast amount of electrical energy. Since the energy would have to come from storage batteries this meant a self starter would require perhaps two or three hundred pounds of batteries.

Leland went to Kettering and told him that if he could come up with a workable system despite the problems he would buy at least 4000 of them guaranteeing Leland a profit on each.

Kettering took the problem under advisement and probably didn’t tell Leland that he’d already come up with a theoretical solution to it on July 23 1908. Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company went to work putting Kettering’s theory to practical use.

What he came up with worked. Not only was there an electric motor to start the engine but it was a far smaller engine than anyone had thought possible fitting easily inside the engine compartment and it required for power only a very small storage battery a small (lead and sulfuric acid) wet cell. Furthermore the circuit included a generator (instead of a dynamo) and a voltage regulator which when the engine was running would recharge the battery.

The 1912 Cadillac came on the market with a self starter installed as standard equipment. Leland and Kettering basked in the admiration of their fellows and Kettering was invited to address the Detroit Chapter of the Society of Electrical Engineers to tell the scientists how he had overcome what had appeared to be an insurmountable problem.

With the assistance of a blackboard Kettering drew a schematic diagram of his circuit explained how it operated and then asked for questions. There was only one question.

One highly indignant electrical engineer got to his feet and asked his fellow engineers why they had permitted Kettering a man who “had profaned every fundamental law of electrical engineering” to address them.

What Kettering had done of course was to adopt the idea he’d used for the cash register motor to the automobile. He had overloaded the engine knowing that he could safely do so because of the short operating cycle. His electric starting motor had been designed to run for no more than a minute at a time. For that minute it was powerful enough to turn the automobile engine over and get it running.

Overloading an electric motor for whatever purpose was heresy to the electrical engineers and they lost no time in telling Kettering what they thought of him. This may be where the phrase “he cried all the way to the bank” was coined because heresy or not the self starter worked and DELCO (which is to say Kettering) had it patented.

Kettering’s concern with money was a simple one. It was valuable to him only because it permitted him to buy the materials he needed for whatever experiments he wanted to conduct. Shortly after the self starter had proved itself Kettering sold his controlling interest in DELCO to United Motors. United Motors was wholly owned by General Motors. Now that he was part of the team so to speak Kettering was told General Motors wanted him to come to Detroit and take over direction of a new company they were forming just for him the General Motors Research Company. There would be they told him a nice little raise for him and certain fringe benefits like stock options. He would quickly become a very wealthy man.  “No thank you” said Charles Franklin Kettering. He had no ambitions to run a company of any kind. He liked what he was doing and he liked doing it where he was right there in Dayton Ohio. He had no intention of moving to Detroit.

The smiles faded. Nobody turned down General Motors. Perhaps he had misunderstood the offer. Separately and together the offer was repeated and increased by an awesome group of automobile big shots. William Crapo Durant was then chairman of the board of General Motors. He got nowhere with Kettering whose refusal was as courteous as it was final. Pierre S. DuPont chairman of the board of Du-Pont had a go at Kettering and went back to Wilmington Delaware after one of the rare failures of his career. Alfred P. Sloan who had built Hyatt Roller Bearing and who was to take over General Motors felt that he could reason with Kettering. He got no further than any of the others.

Finally Walter P. Chrysler (who was later to found the Chrysler Corporation but was then a General Motors executive) went to Dayton and made his sales pitch. He at least got a counteroffer from Kettering.

Kettering said he would move to Detroit and do research there under certain conditions. The conditions were that he was to have neither authority nor responsibility for anything. General Motors would have to give him all the money he wanted for his research and would have to promise him that they would never ask one question about what he wanted the money for or what he did with it after he got it. If he came up with something useful they could negotiate how much money Kettering would be paid for it.

They were incredible conditions and incredibly General Motors accepted them.