The Sturtevant family business was founded in 1883 by Thomas L. Sturtevant, with the aim of satisfying the increasing need for mechanization in the fertilizer industry. Thoms's son Lawrence, and his nephew Thomas J. Sturtevant, came to work for him—Thomas bringing with him a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sturtevant soon branched out into the automotive field and designed various improvements including vacuum brakes and automatic engine lubrication. However, it was his bold invention of the automatic transmission that paved the way for today's automatic cars.
At the time, one of the biggest headaches for designers in the fast evolving car industry was simply getting the power from the engine to the wheels. Sturtevant wanted a way to change gear without having to depress a clutch and temporarily disengage the engine from the wheels. His solution was innovative, but initially a failure. His first automatic car of 1904 used the centrifugal force of spinning weights to change gear. As the speed of the car increased, the spinning action caused these weights to swing outward, where they would eventually engage with a band that shifted the car from low to high gear. The design was flawed and often the weights would fly apart under the stress. But the concept of a car automatically changing gear was proven.
Despite various experimental attempts to come up with a practical automatic car, the initial costs, reliability, and lack of demand meant that it was several decades before the automatic became a common site on the road.
