The tables were loaded with boxes, but they held the stuff that should have been tossed long ago. I went through them anyway, gingerly moving aside items to see beneath the detritus.
One auction-goer, a regular who knew that I was always in search of dolls, mentioned that there were none here today. Then promptly, he came to a box full of new dolls and corrected himself. I’m not much into new dolls so I thanked him and kept walking.
Near the edge of a table I spotted a large plastic jar that reminded me of those old Lance cookie jars. It was filled with something that I didn’t recognize until I was right on top of it: Car keys. Seemingly hundreds of them, the kind I had not seen in ages with nametags attached to a ring.
Fingering a few, I saw that they were keys for Honda, Mercury, Ford, Olds, Jeep, Chevy and Dodge from the 1980s. Some of the tags bore the name “Sid Savage A.D.S.I. Taylor, MI.” Googling later, I found that the company sells auto supplies, including key tags, and has been in business since 1946.
These keys were obviously dated, nothing like the flip-up key in my purse with the thick holder bearing a transponder that keeps others from starting my car and stealing it. I learned that my type of key is called a switchblade, because it remains inside the key fob until I press a button to pop it out like a knife. Transponders became readily available in the late 1990s.
The ones in the jar were your basic keys, which were used up until the 1990s when technology took car keys a step forward. They could be as easily duplicated as a house key by any key-maker. They had no security, so thieves could have their own version made at will.
Most of us give little thought to how we start our cars these days. It’s relatively easy and painless, but it has not always been that way. Starting in the late 19th century, the iron hand crank was used in a procedure both strenuous and dangerous. Many folks were injured when the crank handle flew backward and broke a hand, arm or wrist. It also was a tough turn for women drivers.
An accident that led to the death of a friend of the head of Cadillac Motor Car Co. started that company’s search for a better way to start a car. Henry Leland’s friend had stopped to help a woman whose car had stalled on a bridge. The kickback of the crank broke his jaw, and he later died of his injuries. Leland enlisted Charles Kettering, who had developed an easier way to operate a cash register by pushing a button, to find a solution.
Kettering and his company Delco came up with the first electric starter in this country. All you had to do was push a button on the starter, press the clutch, and the engine came to life.
Cadillac used the new starter on its 1912 models, and Kettering patented it in 1915. By 1913, 44 companies were making electric cranking, lighting and ignition systems. The starter soon could be found on practically every car.
Cadillac’s was said to be the first commercially successful starter, but it was not the only one. Apple Electric Co. was also ready to market its own starter (the company’s ads urged people to demand that the starter be put in their cars) around the same time.
And Kettering was not the first to make an electric starter. H.J. Dowsing of London added one that he made himself to a car he had bought in 1896. The first car sold with a starter was made in Brussels in 1902, and then came Kettering. In 1914, the first key-activated ignition came with a car made by Inter-State Automobile Co. and was adopted by Chrysler in 1949.
Chrysler’s new cars that year – including the Plymouth, Dodge, Royal, Windsor and Desoto – used keys to operate the combination ignition and starter switch. This new procedure made “it impossible for children to move a car which has been left in gear by pushing the starter button,” according to a story in the Popular Mechanics magazine.
Who knows where these keys at auction came from – a collector, a used-car dealership, several dealerships. Some sellers on eBay were suggesting that they could be used for arts & crafts, Steampunk projects and as collectibles.
It was clear, though, that they had little value to bidders at the auction. The jar of keys sold for $2, purchased by the same buyer who was teasing me about the dolls.
