The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1913-05-15
HLF-STARTERS ARE
VERY POPULAR NOW
This New Automobile Device
Forms a Topic For Cen
eral Discussion.

Self-starters form the keynote of
automobile talk of 1918.
In the garage, among auto men and
influence the bone Of contention
throughout the present season has
been nothing more or less than self
starters.
Sixty per cent of the American plea
sure care for 1913, according to a re-
liable estimate, are equipped with this
latest of late motor car accessories.
They are not all electrician be it
from that; nor are they all the cheaper
gas" printing types. But they are
of some type consummate with the sell
ing price of the carof which they
are part. AS the reliability of the
self-starter as it now stands becomes
better and better known the number of
manufacturers installing them upon
their cars being greater year by year.
Two years hence, one prominent motor
car manufacturer said recently, a car
not equipped with self-starter will be
unstable"
At the motor car shows this season
fully forty per cent, or almost half of
the cars shown were equipped with
the self-starter. The majority of these
were of some form of the electrical
starting devices, and the others were
of the "gas" types. Next year, local
dealers predict, the majority of cars
driven in Richmond will be crankless.
First Starters Impractical.
It has only been in the last two
seasons that the self-starter has ever
been considered seriously by the Amer
lean auto manufacturer. Perhaps this
due in a great degree to the non-ef-
f1ciency of the majority of the starters
on the market up until the time that
they first came into extensive use. In
the majority they consisted in the
main of inefficient spring devices or
belts designed to turn the motor over,
and which incurred nearly as much
work as cranking the motor by the or
binary method. The Winton, it is true,
has had the air starter since 1906, but
the form of starter used was so rigidly
surrounded by patents that the other
manufacturers did not have a look in.
But in the 1912 models the self
starter came into real and extensive
use. Electrical engineers recognizing
the growing need for the adoption of
turned their energy toward devising
turned their energy toward devising
an efficient generator which would not
only start the motor but would also
supply power for the electric light
and for the ignition systems. They
worked upon this principle for years
and finally last year perfected 1t to
a point where the resultant devices
were adopted by prominent motor car
manufacturers.
Meanwhile, the development had
been going forward in another line.
The Presto-Lite company of Indianapo-
lis, and other firms had discovered
the carbon gas" let into the cylinders
and then exploded would start the mo-
tor. They developed this to a high
grade of efficiency-to a point where
as started motors will start on first
trial thousand times in succession
and have further developed it until it
stands in the very front ranks of eff
ficient starting systems.
In the meantime inventors have
been busy developing the starter along
the old impractical spring and belt
methods and were getting nowhere.
Electric Starter Efficient.
That the electric starter within sew
eral years will be the eventful type
of automobile starter is the opinion of
those who have watched closely the
tread OF the motor starters and their
actual operation during this season.
The single motor generator which by
means of gearing to the fly-wheel-
starts the motor and when that is ac-
complished Immediately starts gener-
ating current for storage in storage
battery from which point the ignition
and electric lighting is drawn, is the
most favored of the electric starters.
There Is, in addition to this form, the
unit system in which the motor start
er, the generator and magnetic are
separate and distinct units. There are
various adaptations of these two sys-
TENS but they all follow the same gen.
eral plan. Another type Is that in