There has to be a generator of some kind, Ty, to supply voltage to the primary of the "real" coil (which I suspect they are calling the "secondary" coil). So, rotating magnet or magnets on flywheel, single-winding coil mounted close to the flywheel (let's call it the generator coil), fairly conventional battery-ignition-type 100 to 1 step-up coil in the black box, along with the capacitor and points. Why would they do it that way? Well, one possibility would be that they had an opportunity to buy the black box and its contents from the English company that made them. If you can trace the British engine that had the similar black box in the archives, it might turn out the whole ignition system is more or less the same. Or it might not. One might still be a copy of the other, though. Meanwhile if it should turn out to be the actual British system on Jeffery's engine, he has more chance of getting parts for it.
