Charles Kettering

Charles Franklin Kettering was an American engineer whose most consequential invention was the practical electric self-starter for automobiles, developed by February 1911 while he led the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, known as Delco, which he had founded in 1909. The self-starter eliminated the dangerous hand crank previously needed to start a car engine and won the Dewar Trophy in 1913; Kettering paired it with an integrated electrical system for starting, ignition and lighting that remains the basic template for automotive electrical systems. General Motors purchased Delco in 1918, and Kettering served as vice president of GM's Research Corporation from 1920 to 1947, a post from which he oversaw further work on fuels, refrigeration and diesel engines. He held 186 United States patents, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1928, and received the Franklin Medal in 1936 and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Edison Medal in 1958.