Yeah it was automated! Usually one of the kids was tasked with giving the grates a shake first thing in the morning and again before bed at night, or he/she was "automatically" smacked upside the head.

Usually when running a coal furnace or stove, you open the flue and vent to get a good draw going first, then depending on the state of the fire you either add some coal if the fire that is left is small and let that get burning, if there is still a sizeable fire you can shake the grate and get it burning nice and hot before you start adding coal.

Once you get a good pile cooking you can give the grates a good shaking, busting up the chinkers and dropping the ash into the pan, then the pile should be blazing so you can add a good layer of coal.

After that charge gets burning you can rake the pile digging down to move around any big chinkers and move the ones around the edges over the grates. Then you give it another good shake,

At that point your pile should be mostly very hotly burning coal, you then procede to in layered fashion fill the firebox with coal, you let it all get burning good and then you close down the flue and adjust the vent to allow just enough air to keep the fire burning at the heat output you want to maintain. You want the entire pile of coal in the firebox burning rather than non-burning coal sitting on top of a smaller fire underneath. The non-burning coal sitting on top cooks off giving off a lot of gas, that can lead to a smelly fire and even sort of explosions when the cooked off gas accumulates before igniting. Not a bang usually by it can be like a loud very strong puff, usually pushing combustion gas out of the stove's openings.

Basically a coal fire is started in the fall and never goes completely out until the spring. You get to know how your fire burns under various conditions and you try to refuel the fire before the it get's too small to easily come back up to heat. If you wait too long you might end up with only a few small burning coals to try and get the fire going, that can take a while to slowly add pieces of coal and get them burning a few at a time.

You always assess the state of the fire before shaking because if you have too little fire you'll shake that down into the pan with the ash and have to restart the fire from scratch. That can be a pain because the stove/furnace will still be hot because of its mass.

Usually to start a coal fire you use wood, pile in some split wood the size of you thumb, a good layer, cover that with a 2" layer of coal. Light the fire from below if you can, with the flue and vent wide open. as soon as the wood is burning good the coal will start burning and you just keep adding layer of coal, wait for it to start burning then another layer until the fire box is full. Some people use charcoal or charcoal briquettes to start their coal fires also, the "Ready Light" type makes it even easier.

The only real caution is letting the coal fire get too hot, it can put out so much heat it will burn red hot and soften and warp the grate and shaker!

There where probably some semi automated furnaces probably in larger installations like apartment buildings towards the end of widespread coal usage, but because there are so many variables a human operator intervention is hard to do without sometime during the day even on those.