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Show ELECTRICAL GEfiS " PERFECMTTERY iMade First Lighting Unit; Later Brought Out Auto Starting System. "Nearly evjy car owner knows that T. A. Willard had a sre'at deal to do -with" the starting battery." says C. M. McDonald, manager Inter-Mountain IClec-tric IClec-tric company service station, distributors of the Still" Better Willard battery, "but only a few know of the part he took in making electric starting and lighting practical lor automobiles. i "Long before electric lighting was seriously seri-ously considered, Mr. Willard had perfected per-fected a battery for lighting railway coaches, and was familiar writh every detail of the system. This vs in the days when all motor cars were "autos" : and had' to be "wound up"--when acetylene lights were the best to be had, and the spark came from a set of dry batteries. "Electricity had one big job on the automobile au-tomobile that it didn't have on the Pullmanthat Pull-manthat was starting.-. As starting, even with the most economical motor, took considerable current, the battery had to be kept well charged. "One of Mr. Wiliard's biggest jobs in automobile starting and lighting was to make a generator that would keep the batiery 'on charge' all the time, except when the engine was going very slowly. He developed the extra -brush system of regulation, which regulates the charging regardless of the engine speed. "Another important thing Mr. Willard did was to help perfect the small low-voltage low-voltage lamps that are used for head and tail lights and for light on the dash. He not only advocated low-voltage lamps, but proved that better results were possible pos-sible with six or twelve -volt systems than with the earlier twenty-four-volt j system. The higher voltages are now i rarely found. "The mot recent, and perhaps the greatest contribution Mr. Willard ever made to automobile electric lighting, is the threaded rubber insulation. By this invention the use of durable, long-lived rubber insulation in automobile starting and lighting batteries was made possible' for the first time. In a way that was characteristic of Mr. Wiliard's ingenuity; ingenu-ity; he solved the problem of inserting nearly 200,000 tiny threads in each one i oi the battery insulators." |