Although the automobile had “arrived” it still labored under a serious handicap. It was necessary to crank a car by hand in order to start it. Often it was a back-breaking and sometimes an arm-breaking operation. The crank still made the motor car something of a butt for cartoonists and jokesters. Once more, Leland stepped into the Delco picture. Like every other automobile manufacturer, he had a grievance against the crank. One day he picked up his friend, Carter, while driving to the Cadillac plant. On the Belle Isle bridge the car stalled. Carter got out to crank it; the engine kicked back and broke his arm. Leland sent for Kettering and told him of the Carter mishap. Then he said: “The crank is vicious, turbulent and unruly. I am breaking arms all over the country and it’s got to stop. In the past six months six of my workmen have fractured their arms while cranking cars. What can be done?” Kettering replied: “I believe that it would not be difficult to crank a car by electricity.” Always alert for improvement and never hesitating to do pioneering, Leland said: “If you can provide an electric starter, I will put it on my 1912 car.” There was nothing particularly new about the self-starter as such. There were starters that operated by a coiled spring, and starters that used gas or compressed air. None of them, however, had come into anything like wide and satisfactory use. Electricity had turned the trick for ignition; Kettering was certain it could repeat the performance for a self-starter. Kettering returned to Dayton and on the same train with him went a new Cadillac engine. Both were in the barn before day dawned. Deeds appeared to lend a hand. They rousted out an implement maker, got him to send over sprocket wheels and chains, and rigged a temporary set-up with motor and storage batteries. Now came the great question, “Can we do it electrically? Will it turn the engine over?” The “Barn Gang” worked all day, Deeds calm and imperturbable; Kettering with his customary dynamic energy. Late in the afternoon Kettering said, “I wonder if the danged thing will work,” to which Deeds replied, “We’ll soon find out.” The connection was made and the engine turned over. “Then,” as Deeds commented later on, “we knew that quantitatively it was practical.” It was a memorable hour, for in the gathering dusk was born the second of the barn products that put the cap-stone on motoring, and made it safe as well as useful. With the perfection of the electric self-starter, a woman, even a child, could get into a car knowing that by merely pressing a button, the machine would start. It meant farewell to arm- and back-breaking. Gone was the crank and gone, too, was the acetylene tank of compressed gas for the headlights. The electric lighting of automobiles came simultaneously with the self-starter.