That guy must have had to go through about half a dozen steps to get that old car started. Not only that, but if you crank the wrong way, you could lose a finger or break your hand. makes me glad for the modern ignition key system.
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There were individual levers for spark advance and throttle, plus a manual choke. You closed the choke, set the spark advance to top-dead-center, and set the throttle to mid-range. Of course there was an on/off switch which had to be turned on. Then the cranking would begin. People were hurt more when the engine "kicked back", rather than "cranking the wrong way". My grandfather was bringing a car back from Buffalo in the winter in the early 1930's, and the car stalled. When he got out and started to crank the engine it kicked back, threw him into the snow, and broke his arm. In modern cars, the spark advance, choke, and throttle are all taken care of automatically during starting.
shareMakes it pretty understandable why women didn't do much driving in those days! The ones who did drive, I'm sure, usually had men do all that physical and dangerous stuff that preceeded ignition.
shareI am definately not a chick, but even I would hate to go to all that hassle just to drive somewhere - any old person who criticizes how easy it is these days to start a car needs to remember that people of his generation cursed the inconvenience, which led to what we have today!
shareBut it was a little inconvenience compared to saddling up a horse and plodding along, or even riding on a buckboard or stagecoach was pretty miserable after a half hour or so.
shareI had no idea either. We have it very simple today.
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