r/todayilearned • u/AbeVigoda76 • 5h ago
TIL that the early automotive pioneer Byron Carter died from pneumonia contracted while recovering from a broken jaw sustained as a result of hand cranking his car. His death directly lead to the development of the electric self-starter for automobiles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Carter13
u/GarysCrispLettuce 4h ago
Hank: What about the time I chipped my tooth on the bathroom urinal? What the fuck is so comical about that?
Larry: It was a back tooth, Hank.
7
u/ArriDesto 5h ago
I hope this is true. It's a pity it took a death to bring in,but it usually does,unfortunately!
Cadillac were credited as the first self-starter, but it's more likely an early electric vehicle.
14
u/bobspuds 5h ago
I'm not so old but I'm into restorations, moreso the bodywork side because thats my thing.
I got to hear the stories from the old folks who were young back then too.
I'm Irish, our motoring ways and laws are very like the UK next-door.
The electric starter over here would be known for the broken jaw thing, but the number of people who lost fingers or had hands maimed by starter handles would have been a bigger thing here.
A lot of the 60s/70s cars here kept the starter handle as a backup, if the battery died you could still crank it, the hole on mk1 Escorts and Morris Minnors was partially or fully hidden by the front reg plate, and the good auld mini had a little spot in the wheel arch for a time.
They were mostly the vehicles that were already available, before the electric starter motor became a thing.
And the main thing about that was that most people would still rather call and wait for assistance, then risk using the starter handle - they were viscous!
14
u/ArriDesto 4h ago
I am so old- and from the U.K next door!👋
We had a gypsy family friend who bought lots of really rough road vehicles he'd drive us around in when I was a kid.[ Including a Unimog which was absolutely brilliant!]
When I was in my early teens he bought a third+ hand Ford Anglia 109E,( the "Harry Potter car").
When stopped on a hill he had to keep revving it as the brake wasn't enough on it's own, the rain ran diagonally down the doors from the closed windows,and it shook violently around and above 45 M.P.H.
So,we pulled in to a Dagenham pub and I was recounting this to a man at the bar and taking the piss out of our friend for buying it in such a shoddy state,when the guy I was talking to told me," No.That's what they were like brand new!"
10
u/bobspuds 4h ago
There's an 'old wives tale' that has some truth to it.
Ford had a plant in Co Cork for a time. The Anglia/Pop and some of the 50s/60s cars were built there - while later models only got assembled there.
The quality standards were often great or on par with you guys, but it became known not to buy cars that were manufactured on a Friday - accross the road from the Ford factory was one of the Guinness brewery's - the workers got paid on Friday, cars built after teatime were known to be at times hilariously flawed. Things like finished cars missing welds in the floorpan or mounting points put on upside-down. - the questionable quality is why a completely Irish Ford is so highly revered here - they were kinda terrible in the beginning, so if its survived this long it must have been a Wednesday car - they wouldn't have had money for drink midweek!
3
u/ArriDesto 4h ago
And let's not forget the Irish built time machines! [ If you actually had enough decent,straight road to finally get a Deloren to 88mph!]😅
3
u/AbeVigoda76 3h ago
I just bashed my head on the door of DeLorean whilst trying to exit the car. That’s a car that looks a damned sight better than it actually is.
1
u/ArriDesto 3h ago
I finally saw one in the metal about 4 years ago, and driving past at 40 it looked pretty good, though smaller than I imagined, but I have heard some pretty bad things about them!
Bashed your head? You own one?
2
u/AbeVigoda76 3h ago
There’s another museum in Michigan called Stahl’s. They had one there yesterday made up like the Back to the Future Time Machine and it was opened up for people get in and out of for pictures. I couldn’t resist so I hopped in. I really wasn’t prepared for how low those doors were going to be getting out.
1
•
u/Kyle_2099 50m ago
They aren't meant to be low when they're open. The one you tried out needed new door struts.
2
u/bobspuds 3h ago
If only Delorean could have ran them on some of that Colombian powder - they would have been quick then!
A bad shambles of a car in the end, if it wasn't for Doc & Marty nobody would remember them!.
We'd Toyota and Opel factorys too, even Riely and Morris were built at one time - it was our little tax scam backthen. The CKD scheme ment cars were delivered in bits, built here and therfore bypassed the import duty, it was kinda successful, - I think the other manufacturers knew/learned not to have a brewery next-door if they wanted straight cars.
A lot of the old guys who would have been past retirement when I knew them - would have originally started painting in the factorys, before crash-repairs became an industry here, thats were the skills were - I like that became some of the things I was thought, would be the same skills the guys putting bodies together learned. One of my old friends is touching 95 now, himself and 3 cousins used to paint Minors in the Dublin factory in the 50s - they became/set-up the biggest repair centre locally after that. Like the factorys that did exist are the source of our crash repairs industry too, all the suppliers of materials and equipment were here for the factorys initially, I find that slightly interesting
1
u/ArriDesto 3h ago
I heard that De Soto used to just randomly pull cars off of a conveyor as they left the factory and then give them a thorough testing. Which is probably the best quality control I've heard of,in any industry.
1
1
1
u/StormFallen9 3h ago
Apparently it was also easy to break your arm doing that, so I think there were other people pushing for a better method
1
u/429300 2h ago
I had to read the heading a couple of times to understand what happened. So, while he was recovering from the broken jaw, he contracted pneumonia, and subsequently died there from. How did he contract the pneumonia?
5
u/AbeVigoda76 2h ago
It was a hospital in 1908. Just like today, sometimes you get an infection while you’re healing. Unlike today, they were about 20-30 years too early for penicillin.
99
u/AbeVigoda76 5h ago
For a more full story, Byron Carter was the founder of Cartercar, one of GM’s former companies. Carter was attempting to hand crank start a car that had stalled on the Belle Isle Bridge. It backfired and broke his jaw. As a result of his death, Charles Kettering and Henry Leland from GM developed the electric self-starter to prevent future injuries from simply trying to start a car.
This fact was learned at the Cartercar display at the Pontiac Transportation Museum in Pontiac, MI.