Charles F. Kettering : Doing the right thing at the right time
By Richard P. Scharchburg, Thompson Professor of Industrial History
The Man...
Charles Franklin Kettering was born on a farm near Loundonville, Ohio, August 29, 1876. After graduation from high school, he accepted a teaching position in a one-room rural school. Although highly successful as a teacher, his mind was set on going to college.
In the summer of 1896, he entered the College of Wooster (Ohio). 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 the next two years he worked on a telephone line crew, and then once again entered Ohio State, finally completing his electrical engineering degree in 1904.
After graduation, Kettering took a job in the inventions department at the National Cash Register Company (NCR) in Dayton, Ohio. There he developed an electric motor for cash registers, the OK Charge Phone for department stores and several other contributions to a revolution then taking place in business machines.
In 1909, Kettering and Edward A. Deeds, his associate at NCR, formed their own industrial research laboratory, the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (later known as DELCO). Within three years, they had produced a new all-electric starting, ignition and lighting system for automobiles. The system first appeared as standard equipment on the 1912 Cadillac and as its use spread, women could conveniently become drivers without the assistance of a chauffeur.
DELCO was eventually sold to General Motors and became the fo ...