Did You Know?

Most NMA members know that famed inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Charles F. Kettering founded the organization that became NMA. Many also know that he invented the electric starter for the automobile… and that his name is attached to The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York City, founded in 1945. But what else do you know about this Dayton pioneer?

A “screwdriver and pliers” inventor, many of Kettering’s inventions continue to impact all aspects of our society. Kettering and Edward Deeds formed their own industrial research laboratory, the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (later known as the world-recognized Delco Products Division of General Motors Corporation). At his death in 1958, Charles Kettering, was a co-holder of more than 140 patents and possessed honorary doctorates from nearly 30 universities. He believed strongly in the combination of hard work, ingenuity, and technology to make the world a better place… as a sample of his “Ketteringisms” reveals.

Kettering Inventions:

· Electric cash register

· Electric auto ignition and self-starter for automobiles first appeared on the 1912 Cadillac.

· Spark plug

· Freon for refrigerators and air conditioners. Ridgeleigh Terrace, Kettering’s residence in Dayton, was the first air conditioned home in America

· Leaded gasoline

· Quick drying paint for automobiles

· Safety glass

· Portable electric generator

· Four-wheel brakes

· Automatic transmission

· Electric railway gate

· First synthetic aviation fuel

· Aerial torpedo used during World War I

· Incubator for premature infants

Perseverance, even from an early age:

After graduating from high school, he started teaching in a one-room rural school. He entered the College of Wooster in 1896. As a result of long and intense hours of study, his eyesight deteriorated to the point that he was forced to leave college and return to teaching. In 1898, he entered the engineering school at Ohio State, but again his poor eyesight forced him to drop out during his freshman year. For two years he worked on a telephone line crew, and then once again entered Ohio State, finally completing his electrical engineering degree in 1904.

Some thoughts of Charles Kettering:

Mr. Kettering often observed that “…people learn not only with their minds, but with their eyes and ears and hands.” From his early efforts to combine learning with practical needs came the formation of the Flint Institute of Technology in 1919 and the General Motors Institute in 1926. Small wonder then, that when an employee came to him suggesting a gathering of Dayton-area foremen… the forerunner of NMA… he gave the meeting his blessing and support. To really understand the brilliance and depth of Charles Kettering, one only needs to read some of his more erudite statements:

“There are very few dead ends to anything except in peoples’ minds.”

“There is a great difference between know and understanding; you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.”

“People are very open-minded about new things – as long as they’re exactly like the old things.”

“Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”

“Problems are the price of progress. Don’t bring me anything but trouble. Good new weakens me.”

“My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.”

“The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that here are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer.”

“An inventor is simply a person who doesn’t take his education too seriously. You see, from the time a person is six years old until he graduates from college, he has to take three or four examinations a year. If he flunks once, he is out. But an inventor is almost always failing. He tries and fails maybe a thousand times. If he succeeds once, the he’s in. These two things are diametrically opposite. We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach newly hired employees how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.”