Kettering – now probably best known as the second name in the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center – invented the electric starter for the automobile (and led the development of the two-stroke diesel engine, the first aerial missile, and the first colored paint for mass produced cars, to name a few more.)
Consider that before Kettering:
Cars had to be started with that huge crank.
Cars had multiple starting controls, like “choke” and “coil,” that you had to adjust to get the car to start.
And these controls were not only complex, but important – if you forgot to set the Coil on Retard before starting, the crank could kick, whip around and seriously injure, even kill, the person trying to start the car.
Women didn’t drive cars by themselves very much, since they were thought as not being strong enough to start one.