Charles F. Kettering

Charles F. Kettering was an American inventor and engineer who, through his company Delco, developed a practical electric self-starter motor for automobiles, first fitted to 1912 Cadillac models, eliminating the dangerous hand crank that had started every earlier gasoline engine. After Delco was absorbed into General Motors, Kettering led General Motors Research as its vice president from 1920 for the next twenty-seven years, and in December 1921 he and Thomas Midgley Jr. identified tetraethyl lead as a gasoline additive that eliminated the engine knocking that had limited how much power and efficiency an engine could draw from a given fuel. Kettering became the first president of the Ethyl Corporation, formed in 1923 to produce the additive, which remained in widespread use in gasoline for decades before the lead it released into the atmosphere led to its eventual phase-out.