DelcoStory

Story of Delco Light

Charles F. Kettering was born on a Loudonville, Ohio, farm in 1876. Mechanically inclined and a good student, he worked his way through Ohio State University, earning an electrical engineering degree. After joining National Cash Register (NCR) in Dayton as an experimental engineer, he developed the first electric cash register.

While helping a friend build a car, Kettering perfected the high-tension automotive ignition system, a huge improvement over the old low-tension systems then in use. In 1909, he left NCR and, along with two others, started Dayton Engineering Laboratories Co. (Delco). Kettering was a prolific inventor; while producing ignition systems for Cadillac, he came up with a dependable electric starter for car engines. The 1912 Cadillac was the first car that didn’t need to be hand-cranked to start.

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The 750-watt plant had a 1-1/2 hp, single-cylinder, air-cooled engine with a 5-gallon gasoline tank; a separate 6-volt battery was necessary for the starting engine. Unless electric usage was very high, the engine probably ran only once every day or so; Delco advertising claimed that under “normal usage” engine life was 42 years.

One of my very earliest memories, from probably 1938, is of looking out a window of our Pennsylvania farmhouse and seeing a man atop a high pole that had been recently placed. I was told the man was connecting our electricity. I don’t, however, recall being terribly excited by the news because we had electric lights prior to that. You see, in one corner of our dirt-floored cellar was a bank of big glass storage batteries connected to a black Delco-Light plant.

Although electric lights were commonly used in cities, and many city residents enjoyed indoor plumbing, things were different in the country. Kettering turned his attention to the millions of farms that still relied on oil lamps and lanterns, hand water pumps and outhouses.

In 1916, Delco introduced the Delco-Light system. Delco offered 25 models of generator sets capable of producing 500 to 3,000 watts of power. Even small towns that were beyond the reach of electric main lines were served by Delco-Light plants.

The large lead-acid storage batteries had clear glass cases and were arranged in banks of 16, usually on two shelves along a wall. Each battery put out 1-1/2 volts and the 16 batteries were wired in a series to provide the 32 volts of direct current necessary for the system. The batteries required periodic maintenance to make sure the water and acid levels were kept up to specification.

Beside the batteries sat the combination generator and engine set. When the charge in the batteries dropped below a preset level, the engine would start automatically and then shut off when the batteries signaled they were fully charged. All the owner needed to do was to keep the fuel tank full and the oil level in the engine up to the mark. I’m sure the spark plug required cleaning from time to time, and the oil would have needed periodic changing, but the operation was largely automatic.
I don’t recall the size of our Delco-Light plant, but I doubt if it was large enough to provide lights in our barn, which was a good distance from the house. A typical Delco plant put out a total of 750 watts at full load, which would have been enough to light 15 50-watt bulbs, or a combination of fewer lights plus an appliance or two.

Apparently Delco salesmen, their vehicles equipped with a portable Delco-Light plant system wired to a few lights, a water pump and a coffee maker, would visit a farm at dusk. After lighting up the barnyard and pumping some water, they would brew up coffee, hand ’round steaming mugs of the stuff and, hopefully, get the farmer to sign on the dotted line. If that succeeded, the farm wife was shown the many appliances available to work with the system.