AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSIONS
IN AMERICA
by
Charles A. Chayne
Vice President
Engineering Staff
General Motors Corporation
Downloaded from SAE International by Columbia Univ, Thursday, December 06, 2018Acknowledgment is hereby made to the following for their courtesy in
providing photographic material:
Allis Chalmers Manufacturing Company - Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Budd Company - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Chrysler Corporation - Detroit, Michigan
Earle Equipment Company - Detroit, Michigan
Euclid Road Machinery Company - Cleveland, Ohio
Ford Motor Company - Detroit, Michigan
Fuller Manufacturing Company - Kalamazoo, Michigan
Packard Motor Car Company — Detroit, Michigan
Studebaker Corporation - South Bend, Indiana
Appreciation is also extended to General Motors Division Engineers
and to Messrs. Oliver K. Kelley, Gilbert K. Hause and Kenneth E. Brooker
for their assistance in the preparation of the material.
Downloaded from SAE International by Columbia Univ, Thursday, December 06, 2018Ever since the adoption of the internal combustion engine for automotive use,
industry has conducted a constant search for a suitable transmission to over
come the undesirable characteristics of the engine. A transmission with
infinitely variable ratio and fully automatic operation of close to one hundred
per cent efficiency would be the optimum answer. Until it has been evolved in
a durable, compact, and low-cost unit which is easily maintained, the search
will go on.
For two decades, industry in the United States has been seriously at work
developing suitable automatic drive mechanisms for many different uses of the
internal combustion engine. The development work has been in varied fields
of transportation and governed generally by the requirements set by the specific
need of each field, the indicated commercial value of such a device, and the
apparent difficulty of accomplishing a satisfactory result.
Technically speaking, the high-powered American passenger-car has the least
need for an automatic transmission as far as its performance is concerned. The
problem also presents so many cost, weight, and size limitations, together with
conflicting requirements for performance, pleasability, and efficiency, as to
make it an extremely difficult job. However, the multi-billion dollar passenger-
car industry offers the greatest promise of commercial rewards for any sensational
new feature or development. The greater part of all engineering effort, therefore,
has been expended in developing drives for passenger-cars.
Downloaded from SAE International by Columbia Univ, Thursday, December 06, 2018The task is not simple and the requirements are many. The passenger-car
transmissions must satisfy the average owner-driver. What pleases him most
is his own idea of the best combination of reliability, noiselessness, smooth
performance, and flashy acceleration when needed. He wants fully automatic
normal driving with easily operating, smoothly acting forward and reverse
controls; reasonable safety controls such as engine braking and accidental
shift inhibitors; efficiency as it affects gas economy; and above all, a
reasonable initial cost. Obviously, when so many considerations have to be
weighed for the best compromise in determining the design, there are bound
to be many differences of opinion as to which is the best design in passenger-
car automatic transmissions. Any design, to be of any success at all, must
satisfy a fair minimum in all of these requirements. Many attempts have been
made to meet these demands in various ways.
The early attempts to the solution of this problem produced the Owen Magnetic
Electrical Drive and the Carter Car Friction Drive, which were both produced
in America. See Figure 1 and 2. Both of these devices enjoyed some commercial
success, but they failed to qualify for the more keenly competitive era tha
SAE_1952-01-01_520126_AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSIONS IN AMERICA
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