Automotive News GM 100 Supplement

General Motors Story 17 /100 Boss Ket: GM’s wizard of the lab Charles Kettering’s engineering genius produced a steady stream of innovation Don Sherman fter Billy Durant assembled the wheels for what became General Motors and Alfred Sloan mapped a fruitful road ahead, Charles Kettering drove the enterprise forward. Kettering, called “Boss Ket” by associates, either invented or fostered the development of key advancements that moved the automobile from a promising concept into a cornerstone of modern culture. The long hours and hard work of his Ohio farm upbringing didn’t inhibit Kettering’s inquisitiveness. To understand his mother’s sewing machine, he took it apart, reassembled it and made it work better. After breaking an arm in a fall from a hay mow, he became ambidextrous, later teaching himself how to write simultaneously with each hand. Kettering loved to learn, recite and mentor others in school, but his formal education was hindered by extremely poor eyesight. A ravenous appetite for the sciences overcame that handicap, and in 1904, at age 27, he finally earned his degree in electrical engineering from Ohio State University. Working as an independent contractor, Kettering fostered Cadillac’s progress by inventing a reliable ignition system, followed by the first self-starter and lighting system. Noted for his quips, Kettering summed up the challenge of creating those electrical breakthroughs while working around the clock in a Dayton, Ohio, barn as “slightly organized chaos.” © GM Corp. © GM Corp. A The wild blue yonder After receiving an order for 12,000 starter units to be fitted to all 1912 Cadillacs, Kettering reluctantly converted the Dayton Engineering Laboratories — Delco — he founded with Edward Deeds from a research organization into a manufacturing concern. In 1916, he began his long association with Alfred Sloan. That year, Kettering and his associates took over the Orville Wright company, renaming that pioneer aviation enterprise DaytonWright Airplane Co. Delco manufactured 3,000 DeHavilland bombers, the only American-built aircraft to see action in World War I. One of the first aircraft with cantilevered wings and retractable landing gear was built under Kettering’s guidance. After his vision problems subsided and he learned to fly, Kettering became one of the first airborne executives. In 1920 he said: “Last year I made but two railroad trips and instead flew more than 15,000 miles. Several years hence, the aircraft industry will be a big business.” Another of Kettering’s successful endeavors was electrifying rural America with small generators. When the extension of power lines cut into that business, Delco-Light Co. turned its attention to making Frigidaire refrigerators using the Freon refrigerant Kettering developed with DuPont. Above, Charles Kettering, at the wheel, as a young engineer; and left, as a middle-aged corporate success story Quotes from Boss Ket “I have no objection to standardizing bolts and nuts and screws, but I do have a terrible obsession against the standardization of ideas.” “I am not pleading with you to make changes. I am telling you, you have got to make them — not because I say so but because old Father Time will take care of you if you don’t.” “I have never done anything at a desk in my life, because I found out that whatever I thought I could do there wouldn’t work down at the bench. So I started on the bench first and worked back up the other way.” “Thinking is the one thing in the world upon which no one has ever been able to put a tax or tariff.” “We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.” Success and failure In 1919, GM’s policy group invited Kettering to establish and head a central development staff. His response was a flat no. Sloan persisted with a second offer to take over all of Kettering’s Dayton interests so he could focus on basic research, his true passion. Kettering accepted that arrangement, and the first General Motors Research Corp. was established in a building outside Dayton where war planes had been manufactured. The first two projects were finding a way to suppress engine knock, which results from insufficient octane; and a new copper-finned four-cylinder air-cooled automobile engine. 58 September 15, 2008 The lead additive for gasoline proved to be one of Kettering’s most significant technological accomplishments, although lead-related health issues would surface later. But the air-cooled engine, which first appeared in Chevrolets in 1923, was his one epic failure. Recalling that experience later, Kettering said every researcher’s prerequisite is a high resistance to bruising. Boss Ket, the cheerleader Kettering moved GM research operations to Detroit in 1925. With Boss Ket as its cheerleader, GM’s Research Laboratories got to work quieting engines, developing better lubricants, diminishing vibration, smoothing ride and creating the diesel locomotive. The labs also helped improve vehicle appearance by developing better paint and chrome trim. Production of the world’s first successful automatic transmission began just before World War II, and the first modern high-compression V-8 engines were developed soon after the war. In 1945, Sloan and Kettering established the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York to apply industrial research techniques to the study and treatment of lung cancer. Kettering retired from GM in 1947. Rekindling his passion for aviation, he purchased three light planes for personal use and renewed his pilot’s license on his 75th birthday. Lasting tributes to GM’s greatest technical genius include a Dayton suburb named after him; Dayton’s Kettering Field park; three public schools in Michigan and California; the Kettering College of Medical Arts in Kettering, Ohio; the Kettering Health Network; Kettering University (originally the General Motors Institute) in Flint, Mich.; and GM’s top innovation honor, called the Boss Kettering Award. He died in 1958. AUTOMOTIVE NEWS

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