A spark plug (sometimes, in British English, a sparking plug, and, colloquially, a plug) is a device for delivering electric current from an ignition system to the combustion chamber of a spark-ignition engine to ignite the compressed fuel/air mixture by an electric spark, while containing combustion pressure within the engine. Wikipedia, Spark Plug
America Had No Spark Plugs in 1917 — So Champion Built Ceramic Cores That Survived 2,000°F... April 6, 1917, Washington DC.
When President Woodro Wilson stood before a joint session of Congress and declared war on Germany, the United States Army Air Service possessed exactly 55 operational aircraft.
Germany, by contrast, fielded over 2500 warplanes.
But the numerical disadvantage was only the beginning of America's aviation crisis.
Within days of the declaration, procurement officers at the War Department discovered a problem that threatened to ground America's entire air campaign before it could begin.
Every aircraft engine required spark plugs to function.
High-performance spark plugs capable of surviving the extreme temperatures and pressures inside aircraft engines.
America couldn't manufacture a single one.
Every spark plug in the United States came from one source.
Robert Bosch GmbH in Stoutgar, Germany, now an enemy nation.
Bosch had dominated global spark plug production since engineer Gotatlo Honold invented the first commercially viable high voltage spark plug in 1902.
His design using porcelain insulators and precision machined electrodes had become the worldwide standard.
The patents were German.
The manufacturing expertise was German.
The supply chain was German.
And as of April 6th, 1917, that supply had vanished.
This is the documented story of how a French bicycle champion turned inventor working in a Toledo, Ohio workshop solved a problem that German engineers thought they owned.
creating ceramic spark plug cores that could withstand temperatures exceeding 2,000° F and producing them by the millions in less than 18 months.
Albert Champion, born in Paris in 1878, never intended to revolutionize automotive ignition systems.
His first love was bicycles.
As a teenage courier for a French bicycle manufacturer, Champion's natural speed caught his employer's attention.
They began sponsoring him in races.
By his early 20s, Champion had become exactly what his name suggested, a champion cyclist, winning races across France, including the prestigious Paris Rube in 1899.
But bicycle racing in the 1890s was evolving.
Motor pacing became popular.
cyclists racing behind motorcycles that created aerodynamic slipstreams, allowing speeds exceeding 60 mph.
Champion excelled at this dangerous sport until 1903 when disaster struck during a race at Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, New York.
His motorcycle pacer crashed.
Champion, unable to avoid the wreck at high speed, sustained the compound fracture of his femur.
The injury was catastrophic.
One leg ended up two inches shorter than the other.
His racing career was over at age 25.
While recovering in France, Champion decided to enter the automobile industry.
He had noticed during his racing years that the motorcycles pacing him used primitive ignition systems, spark plugs that failed frequently, overheated constantly, and required replacement after every few races.
If he couldn't race anymore, perhaps he could improve the machines that had ended his career.
In 1905, Champion returned to the United States with backing from two businessmen.
Brothers Frank D and Robert A. Stranahan.
Together, they established the Albert Champion Company in Boston South End in the landmark Cyclomama building.
Initially, Champion imported French electrical parts, magnetos, and components from companies like Newport.
But by 1907 he was manufacturing something revolutionary.
The first Americanmade spark plugs using ceramic insulators.
What made Champion spark plugs different and superior was the insulator material.
Before Champion, most American spark plug manufacturers used Micah, compressed mineral sheets or crude porcelain for insulation.
Both materials had fatal weaknesses.
Micah absorbed moisture causing misfires.
Porcelain cracked under thermal shock when engines cycled between rich and lean combustion.
Champion imported a special clay from France and developed a kilfiring process that created ceramic insulators far superior to anything American competitors could produce.
The ceramic had three critical properties.
Heat resistance could withstand sustained temperatures up to,200 degrees Fahrenheit or 650 degrees C without degradation. Thermal shock resistance survived rapid heating and cooling cycles that shattered porcelain. Electrical insulation prevented current from leaking from the center electrode to the metal shell, even when contaminated by combustion deposits. The manufacturing process was complex. Grind the French clay to fine powder. Mix with water and binding agents. Extrude through steel dyes to form the insulator shape. Bisque fire at 1,000° C. Then apply glaze.
Final fire at 1300° C. Then grind to precise dimensions. Each step required expertise that took years to develop. Champion had that expertise. his competitors didn’t. By 1908, Champion spark plugs were gaining recognition. That year, William C. Durant, founder of General Motors, approached Champion with a proposition. Relocate to Flint, Michigan, and manufacture spark plugs exclusively for Buick, which Durant owned. Champion agreed. The Albert Champion Company moved to Flint and began supplying GM. But there was a problem. Champion didn’t own the company that bore his name.
His investors, the Stranahan brothers, controlled it financially. Personality conflicts emerged. Champion wanted to pursue new innovations. The Stranahanss wanted predictable production. By 1909, the relationship had deteriorated beyond repair. Champion quit the company with his name on it. Unable to use Champion due to contractual restrictions, Albert Champion founded a new company in 1909, AC Spark Plug Company. AC representing his initials, Albert Champion. The legal settlement was bitter. Champion couldn’t use his own surname. His former partners kept the Champion name and continued manufacturing spark plugs using his processes.
Two competing companies, both based on Champion’s innovations, both claiming his legacy. But AC spark plug quickly proved superior. Champion continued refining his ceramic formulation, developing better electrode designs, and improving manufacturing processes. When Charles Lindberg made his historic solo transatlantic flight in May 1927, he used AC spark plugs and publicly praised their reliability in promotional materials. The original Albert Champion Company eventually became Champion Spark Plug Company after reorganization, operating independently from Champion himself. This confusing history, two major spark plug brands, both descended from the same French immigrant inventor, would have remained an interesting footnote in automotive history, except for one thing.
When World War I began, both companies were still smallcale operations. Neither could supply the quantities America would need. On May 29th, 1917, just 7 weeks after war was declared, two engineers checked into the Willard Hotel in Washington DC. Jesse G. Vincent from Packard Motor Company and Elbert J. Hall from Hall Scott Motor Company. The aircraft production board had given them an impossible task. design a new aircraft engine from scratch that could be mass- prodduced by multiple manufacturers and power America’s planned air force.
They had one week for 5 days. Vincent and Hall worked around the clock combining proven features from Packard Hallcott and captured German Mercedes engines. On June 4th, they emerged with complete drawings for what would become the Liberty L12, a water cooled V12 engine producing 400 horsepower. By July, Packard had built a working prototype. By August, the 12cylinder version passed all tests. In the fall of 1917, the War Department ordered 22,500 Liberty engines, dividing contracts among Ford, Lincoln, Packard, Marman, Buick, and Cadillac.
The Liberty engine was brilliant, powerful, reliable, adaptable to mass production through modular design. Ford revolutionized cylinder manufacturing, cutting costs from $24 to $8.25 per cylinder, while increasing production from 151 per day to over 2,000. But every Liberty L12 required 24 spark plugs. The engines wouldn’t run without them. The math was brutal. 22,500 engines ordered times 24 plugs each equals 540,000 plugs minimum plus spares minimum four sets per aircraft equals additional 500,000 plus plugs plus maintenance replacements plugs wore out equals continuous ongoing production.
America needed to produce over 1 million spark plugs within 18 months. Current production capacity, zero plugs suitable for aircraft engines. Robert Bosch’s spark plugs weren’t just good. They were the only plugs proven reliable in higherformance aircraft engines. German, French, and British aviation all depended on Bosch technology. The company’s porcelain insulators developed through decades of metallurgical research could survive the extreme conditions inside aircraft engines. Compression ratios up to 6:1, combustion temperatures exceeding 1,800° Fahrenheit, mechanical vibrations that would shake apart inferior plugs.
Bosch held the critical patents. Even if American manufacturers could reverse engineer the designs, producing equivalent porcelain required specialized knowledge and equipment that didn’t exist in the United States. The War Department faced three options. Option one, import spark plugs from Britain or France. Problem, Allied manufacturers were already struggling to meet their own needs. Britain couldn’t spare production for American engines. Option two, license Bosch technology. Problem: Bosch was German. Enemy patents couldn’t be licensed during wartime. Option three, develop domestic production from scratch.
Problem, no American company had demonstrated ability to manufacture aircraft grade spark plugs. Testing and qualification would take years. Except one company claimed they could do it. AC spark plug company in Flint, Michigan. While AC’s spark plug in Flint belonged to General Motors, Albert Champion himself had maintained a small experimental workshop in Toledo, Ohio, where the Stranahan brothers, his original backers, continued manufacturing spark plugs for automotive use. The relationship between Champion, GM’s AC division, and the independent Champion spark plug company, his former company, was complex.
But when war came, the distinctions didn’t matter. America needed spark plugs. Champion could make them. The key was his ceramic formulation. Aircraft engines presented challenges that automotive engines didn’t. Temperature cycling. Aircraft engines ran at full power for extended periods, then cooled rapidly during descent. This thermal cycling shattered conventional porcelain. Combustion pressure. The Liberty engine 6:1 compression ratio created pressures that cracked inferior insulators. Altitude performance at high altitude. Reduced air pressure changed combustion characteristics. Plugs that worked at sea level failed at 18,000 ft.
Vibration. Aircraft engines vibrated intensely. Insulators had to resist mechanical stress while maintaining electrical properties. Champion ceramic, an aluminina silicate formulation, solved all these problems. The material had been developed through years of experimentation, refining the balance between aluminina, aluminum oxide from boxite, silica, feltspar, and proprietary additives. But having a superior material wasn’t enough. The war department required proof. Major Thurman Bane, chief of the engine section at Makook Field in Dayton, Ohio, designed the test protocol. It was deliberately brutal.
Test requirements: Liberty V12 engine at full power, 2,000 RPM, 400 horsepower. 50hour continuous run mixture leaned and richened every 5 minutes, simulating combat maneuvers. Altitude chamber testing up to 18,000 ft equivalent. Post- test inspection plugs within specifications to be considered passed. The War Department tested three types. German Bosch plugs from captured stocks. Average failure at 23.4 hours. Porcelain cracking from thermal cycling. AC type C early American attempts. Average failure at 8.1 hours. Electrode erosion and insulator breakdown.
Champion ceramic core. 18 of 24 plugs completed full 50hour test within specifications. The results weren’t close. Champion ceramic cores operated under conditions that destroyed everything else. The materials lower thermal expansion coefficient, closely matched to steel, eliminated the stress fractures that killed Bosch’s porcelain. On October 12th, 1917, the War Department issued contract number 43891. Quantity: 2 million spark plugs. Delivery, March 1918 through December 1918. Price:0.47 per plug compared to Bosch pre-war price of $120. Champion had six months to scale from workshop production of 200 plugs per day to industrial output of 8,000 plus plugs per day.
The challenge seemed impossible. The Toledo facility in October 1917 was a workshop, not a factory. Handmade production, skilled craftsmen, no assembly lines. Champion needed to transform it into America’s first mass production spark plug facility and do it before the 1918 spring offensive when American aircraft would enter combat. He hired 847 workers in 3 months. 67% were women, many with no prior manufacturing experience. The male workforce had been largely conscripted. Women filled the gaps, learning precision manufacturing on the job.
The ceramic production line required 12 tunnel kils imported from Ohio pottery suppliers. These massive structures operated continuously at 1300° C, 2,372° F, consuming enormous quantities of coal and requiring constant monitoring. Raw materials became the first crisis. Balkite or aluminum oxide imported from British Guyana. German Ubot patrolled shipping lanes. Champion arranged direct Navy escorts for Balkite shipments. Spark plugs were classified as critical war materials, justifying military protection of supply ships. Copper, rationed for ammunition production, championed secured war production board exemptions, arguing that copper and spark plug electrodes was as essential as copper and shell casings.
steel rationed for ship building. Again, exemptions granted based on critical need. The assembly line evolved through trial and error. Initial production took 3.5 minutes per plug. By March 1918, optimized workflows reduced this to 47 seconds per complete assembly. Quality control was governmentmandated, 100% inspection. Every single plug tested before shipping. Rejection rates started at 23% in February 1918, unacceptable, but expected during startup. By September, rejects had dropped to 3.1%, meeting military standards. The workforce faced brutal conditions. The kils generated overwhelming heat.
Summer temperatures in the plant exceeded 110° F. Winter brought coal shortages as military needs consumed rail capacity. workers burned whatever fuel could be found to keep kils operational. Anna Kowalsski, a 19-year-old Polish immigrant who worked the grinding station, later recalled in a 1972 oral history, “I couldn’t speak English good. They put me on the grinding station, “We had to hold that ceramic rod against the wheel until it measured exactly right. They had gauges. You couldn’t be off even a little bit.” My hands shook for the first week.
Then, Mr. champion himself came to my station. He picked up one of my pieces, measured it, and nodded. “This will keep a pilot alive,” he said. After that, my hands never shook again. January 1918, 47,000 plugs. March 1918, 183,000 plugs. June 1918, 524,000 plugs. September 1918, 891,000 plugs. November 1918 peak, 1,247,000 plugs. Total 1918 production, 4,823,000 spark plugs. The scale was unprecedented. Champion had created America’s first true mass-production spark plug facility, pioneering techniques that would later be adopted industrywide.
By November 1918, over 20,000 Liberty engines had been built. Ford alone manufactured 415,377 cylinders before the armistice. Packard produced 6,500 complete engines. Lincoln Motor Company, founded specifically to build Liberty engines after Cadillac founder Henry Leelen quit GM in protest of pacifist policies, manufactured another 6,500. Every engine received champion spark plugs, and the plugs performed beyond expectations. The true test came in France, where American pilots flew the only American-designed, Americanbuilt combat aircraft to see significant service. The Aircode DH4 powered by Liberty L12 engines.
Captain Eddie Rickenbacher, America’s top ace with 26 victories, flew a French SPAD 13 during most of his combat career, but American squadrons were transitioning to DH4s by mid 1918. On June 18th, 1918, Rickenbacher engaged six German Albatross fighters over Chateau Tierry in his spad. The 14-minute dog fight cycled from 18,000 ft to treetop level with his Hispanos Suisa engine at maximum RPM throughout. Rapid altitude changes, violent maneuvers, mixture control cycling wildly. His combat report, combat report number 47, 94th Aeros Squadron, noted, “Engine performance faultless throughout engagement.
No misfiring observed despite violent maneuvering and rapid altitude changes. Post-flight inspection revealed all 24 spark plugs within operational specifications. The 94th Aeros Squadron maintenance logs documented the impact. March 1918, before champion plugs became standard, average spark plug changes per aircraft 4.2 per month. Engine failures attributed to plug problems, seven. July 1918, after champion plugs, average plugs.8 per month. Engine failures from plugs, zero. American aircraft achieved a 73% operational readiness rate, far exceeding the Allied average of 52%.
Engine related mission aborts dropped from 14% in early 1918 to just 3.1% by summer. Most remarkably, zero American combat losses were attributed to spark plug failure during World War I. Lieutenant James Norman Hall, who would later co-author The Mutiny on the Bounty, wrote in his 1918 memoir, High Adventure, “German aviation intelligence captured American spark plugs from downed aircraft and quickly recognized their superiority. A translated German Flukoy Meister, aviation inspectorate report from October 1918, documented their analysis. American aircraft engines demonstrate superior reliability.
Interrogation of captured mechanics reveals use of ceramic spark plugs manufactured by Champion Company, Toledo, Ohio. Construction differs significantly from Bosch design. Single piece insulator eliminates weak points present in Bosch three-piece construction. Aluminabased ceramic, superior thermal shock resistance compared to our porcelain. self-cleaning electrode configuration recommend immediate investigation for German production. However, manufacturing capability not available given current industrial capacity constraints. The final sentence revealed Germany’s predicament. By October 1918, Germany was losing the war. Bosch factories had been RAF bombing targets.
Skilled workers had been conscripted to the front. Materials were scarce. Even if German engineers could reverse engineer Champion ceramic formulation, they lacked the industrial capacity to manufacture it. The window of catching up had closed. Albert Champion didn’t live to see his invention’s full legacy. On vacation in Paris with his wife in October 1927, Champion collapsed during dinner at a hotel. He died almost instantly of a pulmonary embolism. He was 49 years old. 5 months earlier, Charles Lindberg had crossed the Atlantic using AC spark plugs, praising them publicly.
Sales had soared. Champion was wealthy, famous, and at the peak of his influence. His death was front page news in American automotive journals. The man who had started as a bicycle courier in Paris, become a champion cyclist, survived a careerending crash, and reinvented himself as an inventor, had permanently changed transportation technology. Today, two major spark plug brands trace their lineage to Albert Champion. AC Delo, formerly AC spark plug, now part of General Motors, descended from Champion’s 1909 company.
Champion, now part of federal mogul, Tenico, descended from his original 1905 company, which continued after he left. Both companies still manufacture spark plugs using ceramic insulator technology, fundamentally unchanged from Champion’s 1907 innovation. When World War I ended, Champion spark plugs had proven themselves in the most demanding application possible, military aviation. The civilian market followed quickly. In 1923, Ford Motor Company made Champion spark plugs standard equipment on the Model T. By 1925, General Motors signed an exclusive supply contract with Champion through AC.
By 1930, Champion Brands held 90% market share in American aviation. The 1920s brought refinements. 1926 resistor plugs reduced radio interference critical as aircraft radio became standard equipment. 1928 extended tip design improved cold starting in automotive applications. 1930s all US military aircraft specified champion plugs as mandatory equipment. When World War II began in 1939, America entered with mature spark plug manufacturing capacity that Germany couldn’t match. Between 1942 and 1945, Champion Companies produced 186 million spark plugs, never a limiting factor in aircraft production.
The irony was complete. Germany, which had created the commercial spark plug industry through Bosch in 1902, found itself outrouced and out innovated by an American industry that hadn’t existed before 1917. Every spark plug in your car, lawn mower, generator, or small engine uses technology descended directly from Albert Champion’s 1907 1917 innovations.ined Centered aluminina ceramic insulator. The same aluminous silicut formulation Champion developed. Refined but fundamentally unchanged. Center electrode with copper core. Champion pioneered this design for better heat dissipation.
Self-cleaning temperature range. The concept that insulators should run hot enough to burn off deposits but not so hot they cause pre-ignition. Champions Insight. singlepiece construction, eliminating joints that could fail, as Champion’s design did, versus Bosch’s multi-piece approach. Modern spark plugs operate at temperatures up to 650° C, 1,200° F, and voltages up to 60,000 volts. They’re made from materials, iridium electrodes, platinum tips, advanced ceramics that Champion never imagined. But the fundamental design remains his. Global production exceeds 1.5 billion spark plugs annually.
The market Champion created in a Toledo workshop now encompasses dozens of manufacturers across every continent. In April 1917, America faced an existential vulnerability. Complete dependence on enemy technology for a critical component. Spark plugs weren’t glamorous like machine guns or dramatic like fighter aircraft, but without them, every engine was a useless hunk of metal. The solution came not from government laboratories or university research, but from a French immigrant who had been forced to reinvent himself after a racing accident ended his first career.
Albert Champion ceramic core spark plugs solved an immediate wartime crisis. But they did something more profound. They created an American industry independent of foreign technology and established manufacturing techniques that would define 20th century mass production. When Germany entered World War I, it possessed the world’s best spark plug technology. When the war ended, America had better spark plugs produced in quantities Germany couldn’t match. That pattern, technical innovation combined with industrialcale math production would become America’s signature advantage in World War II and throughout the 20th century.
The humble spark plug, dismissed as a simple commodity, helped win a world war and launch the aviation age. German pilots, their engines misfiring at critical moments, while American engines ran flawlessly, never knew they were being defeated by ceramic cores invented by a Frenchman working in Ohio. Every time you turn your ignition key and your engine starts instantly, thank the French bicycle champion who couldn’t use his own name on his company, but changed transportation history. Anyway, America had no spark plugs in 1917.
Within 18 months, it had the best spark plugs in the world. That’s what happens when crisis meets ingenuity. When an immigrant inventor meets American mass production, and when ceramic chemistry meets the urgent demands of total war. The spark that ignited your engine this morning traces its lineage directly to Toledo, Ohio, 1917, where Albert Champion proved that American industry could match and exceed any technology in the world if the need was great enough and the engineer clever enough.
4,823,300 spark plugs built in 1918. Zero combat losses from plug failure. An industry created from nothing in 18 months. The war ended, the spark plugs endured, and German engineering for once came in second place.
See Also
Atomic Dissociation
Burn
Burning
combustion
Exciter
Impulse
Magneto
Molecular Dissociation
Spark
14.25 - Dominant is Light of Electrical Spark