Charles Franklin Kettering :: essays research papers

Charles Franklin KetteringCharles F. Kettering Doing the right thing at the right cartridge holder 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 agrarian 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 firmness of purpose of long and intense hours of study, his eyesight deteriorated to the point that he was forced to countenance college and return to teaching. In 1898, he entered the engineering school at Ohio State, yet again his poor eyesight forced him to drop out during his starter year. For the next two years he worked on a earphone line crew, and then once again entered Ohio State, finally completing his electric engineering degree in 1904. After graduation, Ketteri ng took a job in the inventions department at the National Cash Register participation (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 alteration then taking place in business machines. In 1909, Kettering and Edward A. Deeds, his participator 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, kindling and illume 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 lastly sold to General Motors and became the foundation for the General Motors Research Corporation of which Kettering became depravity president in 1920. The list of innovations and inventions that are credited to Charl es F. (nicknamed "Boss") Kettering is impressive. His tidings of patents contains more than 300 separate applications that range from a portable lighting system for farms to coolants for refrigerators and air conditioners. Other patents included a World fight I "aerial torpedo," a device for the treatment of venereal disease, and an incubator for premature infants. Duco paint and Ethyl gasoline were also his ideas and he was slavish in their development.