I’ve been enjoying the Jam Handy Chevrolet newsreels lately. Nice mix of features. Each episode includes pretty girls, activity in Death Valley, fishermen, unusual pets, school safety, and big construction projects.
This 1937 episode focuses on trailer living, which was one solution to Depression unemployment. The text doesn’t overly glamorize the lifestyle, making it clear that many folks were doing it from necessity. “Coincidentally”, it highlights an interesting gimmick in the new ’37 Chevy.
The radio in the car provides news and entertainment, and the automatic charging notch on the light switch makes sure the battery is fully charged even though the car is only driven a few miles a day.
Charging notch? Old car forums discussed it a couple times. Apparently the first click on the light switch caused the generator to charge the battery faster than usual to keep it up during short trips.
The ’37 schematic shows it implicitly:
A resistor in line with the field winding is inside the light switch. Presumably the “charging notch” shorts out part or all of the resistor to enable more current output from the generator.
GM was trying odd electrical gimmicks in the late ’30s. The ’38 Olds had an extra position on the light switch for country driving, which set the left headlight to low beam and the right headlight to high beam.
And the ’38 Buick had a little switch on the end of the new column gearshift that blinked lights on the trunk to signal turns. Odd gimmicks sometimes turn into necessities!
Polistra's Mill 