Charles F. Kettering

Charles Franklin Kettering (August 29, 1876 – November 25, 1958) sometimes known as Charles Fredrick Kettering was an American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 186 patents.

He was a founder of Delco, and was head of research at General Motors from 1920 to 1947. Among his most widely used automotive developments were the electrical starting motor and leaded gasoline. In association with the DuPont Chemical Company, he was also responsible for the invention of Freon refrigerant for refrigeration and air conditioning systems. At DuPont he also was responsible for the development of Duco lacquers and enamels, the first practical colored paints for mass-produced automobiles. While working with the Dayton-Wright Company he developed the "Bug" aerial torpedo, considered the world's first aerial missile.[5] He led the advancement of practical, lightweight two-stroke diesel engines, revolutionizing the locomotive and heavy equipment industries. In 1927, he founded the Kettering Foundation, a non-partisan research foundation, and was featured on the cover of Time magazine in January 1933.

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Stories about Charles F. Kettering

1955 - Getting the Hoover Medal

THE HOOVER MEDAL, founded in 1929, was instituted to commemorate the civic and humanitarian achievements of Herbert Hoover, and the first award was made to him in 1930.

The trust fund creating the award was the gift of Conrad N. Lauer, of Philadelphia. It is held by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers and is administered by a Board of Award consisting of representatives of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. The medal was executed by John Flanagan, of New York.

Since the presentation of the medal to Mr. Hoover in 1930 it has been awarded fifteen times, as follows:

1936 Ambrose Swasey

1938 John Frank Stevens

1939 Gano Dunn

1941 D. Robert Yarnall

1942 Gerard Swope

1944 Ralph Edward Flanders

1945 William Henry Harrison

1946 Vannevar Bush

1948 Malcolm Pirnie

1949 Frank B. Jewett

1950 Karl T. Compton

1951 William Loren Batt

1952 Clarence D. Howe

1954 Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.

1955 Charles F. Kettering

The 1955 medal was presented by Scott Turner, chairman of the Hoover Medal Board of Award, on November 17, 1955 at a joint honors luncheon during the Diamond Jubilee Annual Meeting of The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Conrad Hilton Hotel, Chicago, Illinois.

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CHARLES F. KETTERING

Scientist, engineer, inventor, philosopher, organizer of scientific efforts, developer of engineering devices and techniques, leader in industrial research, whose ideals and accomplishments have been inspirations to the men of many countries.

Charles Franklin Kettering, American inventor and manufacturer, a director and former vice president of General Motors and former general manager of the General Motors Research Laboratories, was born on a farm near Loudonville, in Ashland County, Ohio, on Aug. 29, 1876. At present, having retired June 2, 1947, as head of the GM Research Laboratories, he retains the status of research consultant.

Like all farm boys, Charles Kettering was responsible for a number of daily chores, and his spare time was spent in milking, cultivating corn and digging potatoes. The first money he earned, $14 for cutting a neighbor’s wheat crop, was spent on a telephone purchased from a mail-order house. On the day of its arrival, Mr. Kettering dismantled the apparatus to study it. He attended the district school near his home and later graduated from the Loudonville High School. Though not a spectacular student, his scholastic standing was quite high.

At 19 Mr. Kettering was teacher of go children in a one-room country school at Bunker Hill, Ohio. His ambition, however, was to acquire a college education, and in the summer of 1896, he entered the College of Wooster to study the classical languages. While he was at Wooster, Mr. Kettering learned of the engineering courses offered at Ohio State University, and he was fired with ambition to attend the electrical engineering classes there.

But toward the end of that summer at Wooster College his weak eyes failed, and he became almost blind as a result of eyestrain from overstudy. His hope of becoming an electrical engineer temporarily shattered, Mr. Kettering returned to his home to wait for his eyes to recover from the strain to which they had been subjected.

Several months afterwards, Mr. Kettering worked as a teacher in the grade school at Mifflin, Ohio. With him was his sister, Emma, who taught the younger children. Mr. Kettering’s interest in scientific research developed very rapidly at this time. His evenings were spent with a local druggist friend, John C. Robinson, with whom he conducted many experiments in chemistry and electricity.

In 1898, when he was 22, Mr. Kettering’s eyes had recovered sufficiently to permit him to register in the engineering school at Ohio State University. One of his first teachers was Dr. F. O. Clements, who was closely associated with him in later life. From 1916 until his retirement in 1939, Dr. Clements was retained by Mr. Kettering as technical director of his research laboratories.

During his freshman year, Mr. Kettering’s weak eyes were a great handicap to him. Although he went back in the fall for his sophomore year his eyesight became so bad that he found it necessary to interrupt his education once more. In 1900, he began work for the Star Telephone Company of Ashland, Ohio, as a laborer with a telephone-line gang. By the middle of the summer he was made foreman of that gang and his eyes had regained much of their strength. He went on from there to do everything in the operation of a small telephone company. His principal achievement was installing a central battery telephone exchange in Ashland. This was one of the first central-battery systems in Ohio.

In 1901, Mr. Kettering returned once more to the Ohio State University as a sophomore. He was then 25. He continued to work as a telephone trouble-shooter and installation man in his spare time, and in this way was able to support himself through college. In 1904, he graduated at the age of 28 with the degree of mechanical engineer in electrical engineering. According to tradition, he is supposed to have thrown away his diploma, because he did not want to think his education was finished.

Immediately after graduation, Mr. Kettering became associated with the inventions department of the National Cash Register Company at Dayton, Ohio. His first assignment was to develop an electric drive for the cash register. The experts had said that this job could not be done, because it would require an electric motor as large as the cash register itself to do the job. Mr. Kettering knew, however, that he could overload a small motor if it ran for only an instant and had rather long periods to cool down between times. Using this fact as the basis of his design, he produced his first electric cash register in 1904. Today — so years later — the electric drive on the cash register is essentially unchanged from the original model.

From 1904 to 1909, Mr. Kettering remained as an inventor with the National Cash Register Company. In this five-year period, he completely revolutionized the cash register business with his inventions and improvements on accounting and calculating equipment. Another one of his contributions was the development of the O.K. Charge Phone System, which provided for a rapid authorization of customers’ charge orders in large department stores. Twenty-five years later, in 1936, Mr. Kettering was elected to the board of directors of the National Cash Register Company in recognition of the services which he had rendered to it during the five years of his employ.

By 1909, Mr. Kettering left the National Cash Register Company and organized his own laboratory, the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, later abbreviated to “Delco.” His partner in this venture was Edward A. Deeds, who was associated with the National Cash Register Company in an official capacity and also with the Republic Motor Car Company of Hamilton, Ohio. Through their close association with the automobile industry of that day, both Mr. Kettering and Mr. Deeds had acquired a knowledge of the shortcomings of the electrical equipment used in the automobile. It was one of their purposes in founding Delco to redesign this equipment and improve automobile performance.

Among the first of the problems to which Mr. Kettering turned his attention was the ignition system. Two types of ignition were then in use —the magneto system and the battery system. In the battery system, dry cells were used in connection with a master vibrator to provide a stream of sparks in the cylinder for ignition purposes, but only at the expense of avery heavy drain on the dry cells, causing their early depletion. The best that could be expected from a single set of cells was a possible three hundred miles.

Mr. Kettering had done considerable research on electrical relays in his work for the telephone company and at National Cash Register, and the possibility of using a controlling relay instead of vibrators in the ignition system suggested itself to him as a means of eliminating some of the more troublesome defects in the battery ignition system. In this way, he was able to substitute one positive spark per power stroke for the shower of sparks that had been used before, thus reducing the drain on the dry cells. An experimental model incorporating this idea was constructed and found to be superior in all respects to the vibrator system. As a result of this improvement, the driving range of the automobile was increased from a possible 300 miles to over 2,000 miles on a single set of dry cells.

The first automobile manufacturer to use Mr. Kettering's new ignition system was the Republic Motor Car Company, which fitted a portion of its 1gog output with the system. Two other motorcars — the Stoddard-Dayton and the Speedwell — used it as optional equipment. The most important user, however, was the Cadillac Motor Car Company, which investigated the system in 190g and offered it as standard equipment on its 1910 model.

Meanwhile, Mr. Kettering had been searching for an electrical generator suitable for automobile lighting. From his experiments, he became convinced that such a generator could be converted into an electric motor, having a relatively high torque so that it could be used for cranking purposes as well as for battery charging. About this time, Henry Leland, general manager of the Cadillac Motor Company, was mourning the death of a personal friend who had broken his jaw while cranking an automobile. Mr. Leland at once encouraged Mr. Kettering to develop his idea and submit a working model.

Within a year, Mr. Kettering’s electrical starting, lighting and ignition system was established fact. Preliminary construction work on the new starter commenced early in September, 1910. By the middle of the month, Mr. Kettering and his assistants were making their first tests and sketching plans for the final assembly. On the night of Dec. 17, 1910, the first starter was completed and assembled on a Cadillac car. After two months of feverish redesigning and testing this car was shipped to Mr. Leland in Detroit, Feb. 16, 1911.

In Detroit the new starter was subjected to a series of exacting tests by the Cadillac engineers and was found to perform in a satisfactory manner. The next few weeks, however, brought with them one disaster after another. First Mr. Kettering suffered a broken leg while testing an experimental car and was ordered to stay in bed for some weeks. Then the Leland garage in Detroit caught on fire and the only car equipped with the self-starter was badly damaged. Faced now with imminent failure of his plans, Mr. Kettering scrambled out of his sick bed against doctor’s orders and took a train to Detroit, where with his leg in a plaster cast, he was able to get the damaged self-starter and the car on which it was installed back into operation.

After further tests, Cadillac accepted Mr. Kettering's design and a two-year contract was awarded to Delco. Though it had been his desire to confine Delco’s activities to research and development and not to enter the manufacturing field, Mr. Kettering could find no electrical manufacturer at this time willing to produce the self-starter, as he had been able to do with his system of battery ignitions. It was therefore necessary to subcontract the production of some of the parts and to do the remaining manufacture and the assembly in a factory set up in Dayton. Deliveries of the self-starter on a commercial scale began in August and September. Twelve thousand selfstarters were installed on Cadillac cars in 1912.

Despite the opposition of certain technical men who were quite outspoken in their criticism, public acceptance of the self-starter was instantaneous and complete. In 1912 Cadillac received its second Dewar trophy, the highest award in motordom, for pioneering the electric starting, lighting and ignition system. In 1913, 46 per cent of the cars exhibited at the motor show in New York’s Grand Central Palace were equipped with electrical starters. Other makers got into the business, and by 1914 the proportion of cars using electrical starters had increased to 85%. Of the 141 cars with self-starters exhibited in 1914, 141 were provided with electrical starters as standard equipment, four with electrical starters as optional, five with compressed air starters, and one with an explosion system utilizing compressed acetylene gas.

The effect of the starting, lighting and ignition system on the industry as a whole was equally stimulating. Automobile production was nearly doubled in 1912 and the rate of growth was even more pronounced in the years immediately following popular acceptance of the self-starter in 1918. Naturally, the self-starter was not solely responsible for this continued expansion. There were numerous other factors, among them the six-cylinder engine, the closed body and installment buying — each of which contributed in part to the growth of the industry. But the importance of the self-starter was tremendous. More than any other single innovation on the automobile, it made the owner-driven car a reality. For the first time, women felt confident that they could drive without a man along to crank the engine. This simple fact alone accounted for doubling the number of potential automobile users.

Shortly after the successful establishment of the self-starter, Mr. Kettering began working on the invention of an independent electric generator for use in isolated farm houses, schools, camps and other buildings which could not be economically served by central station power. This work culminated in the Delco Light farm lighting system, which was placed on the market in 1914. The Domestic Engineering Company was founded to manufacture the units.

In 1916, Mr. Kettering and Mr. Deeds sold their interest in the Delco Company to the United Motors Corporation, which later became part of General Motors, under an arrangement by which they continued to be the chief officers of it. They then established the Dayton Research Laboratories in Dayton to work on a number of problems of interest and merit. One of these endeavors was the effort to find a cure for knock in the gasoline engine which some years later culminated in the discovery of the antiknock agent, tetraethyl lead.

After the entrance of the U. 8. into World War 1, which came about that time, the new research laboratory was the center of the wartime researchers headed by Mr. Kettering. One of these was the development of small automatic flying and manless bombing plane, or aerial torpedo, which was the predecessor of the guided missile of the present day.

In 1920 the new laboratory was taken over by General Motors and made the nucleus of an enlarged organization headed by Mr. Kettering, which became the General Motors Research Laboratories Division, and which was moved to Detroit in 1925.

Since 1920 Mr. Kettering’s activities have been so closely allied with those of the General Motors Research Laboratories that it is difficult to separate the one from the other. Mr. Kettering believes that research should be a cooperative enterprise involving the integrated talents of all sorts of engineers and technicians. He himself functioned as a sort of spark plug, setting off one scientific explosion after another. The development of a new bearing material, for example, might be the result of the concerted efforts of a dozen different technicians, but the personality and drive behind that development were Mr. Kettering’s.

A description of the important inventions and discoveries which came out of Mr. Kettering’s research organization would fill several thick volumes. Tetraethyl lead was discovered by the late Thomas Midgley, Jr., in research guided by Mr. Kettering. His associate in this was T. A. Boyd, who is now a GM Research Laboratories consultant. This substance forms the basis of Ethyl gasoline, and for many years it has been added as an antiknock agent to nearly all gasoline. This has made possible tremendous improvements in the performance and economy of gasoline engines. In 1926, the synthesis of the fluorine-chlorine compounds, a new family of refrigerants, was begun. Existing refrigerants, such as ammonia and sulphur dioxide, had undesirable properties which made them noxious or dangerous. The refrigerants developed by Mr. Kettering and his associates, however, are odorless, tasteless, non-corrosive, non-inflammable and non-toxic, and yet have all the properties necessary for a good refrigerant. Dichlorodifluoromethane, known as Freon, is a member of this family of com pounds.

These, however, are only a few of the large number of developments that took place at the General Motors Research Laboratories at this time. Other developments included the work on Durex bearings (1920); quick-drying lacquer finishes (1922); quick process malleable iron (1923); harmonic balancers, static and dynamic balancing machines, and four-wheel brakes (1924); crankcase ventilation, two filament headlamps, 10W and 20W winter oils, and the extraction of bromine from sea water (1925); engine oil coolers and two-way shock absorbers (1926); chromium plating; Inlox rubber bushings for spring shackles, and safety glass (192%); fatigue study of gears (1928); fixed focus headlamps and extreme-pressure lubricants (1929); resonance type intake and exhaust silencers, and the unit injector for Diesel engines (1930); variable-speed transmissions (1931); heat-resisting valve steel (1933); copper-lead bearings (1934); pearlitic malleable iron pistons (1935); permanent-mold centrifugally-cast brake drums (1936); pearlitic malleable iron camshafts and tellurim treated malleable iron (1937); wear-resistant cylinder iron and molybdenum-manganese-silicon steel (1938); powered-iron metallurgy and grooved and tinned plated piston rings (1939); silver bearings, and copper-nickel matrix corrosion-resistant lead bearings (1940); high compression automotive engine (1947).

One of the outstanding contributions to transportation made by the GM Research Laboratories is the two-cycle Diesel engine, used in Diesel locomotives, marine installations and stationary power plants. This development, which was started in 1929, resulted in completely revolutionizing railroad equipment and operation.

The same Diesel engines were adopted by the Navy for submarines. These have been produced in large quantities. This fact is illustrative of the adaptability of a fundamental research development. More recent research has resulted in still smaller and lighter high-output Diesels. These engines are now powering Naval craft of many kinds, as well as large trucks and buses, tanks, and mobile power plants. This was a research development which is of equal usefulness either in peace or in war.

As early as 1937 the Research Laboratories, under Mr. Kettering’s supervision, began an intensive program of marine development in close cooperation with the Navy. When the United States entered the war in December, 1941, the results of this program were already in production and available. Another important research contribution to the war effort in which Mr. Kettering and his men had a large part was the development of improved means of producing and utilizing

high-octane fuels. The high output and light weight of the aircraft engines of World War II was made possible by these high-octane fuels. Immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the laboratories were placed on a full wartime basis with over g5 per cent of facilities engaged in projects directly connected with the Army and Navy.

In the military field the Research Laboratories functioned in the same way as in prewar commercial activities. The laboratories assisted the armed services and cooperated in the development of such things as the marine propeller, aerial torpedo, gyro flight control instruments, heavy duty lubricants, earth inductor compass, pedograph and improved metals.

Mr. Kettering has always regarded the Research Laboratories as a place where new industries and new employment opportunities are created. New industries, created by research, he believes, will do much to solve our economic problems. “We are not at the end of our progress,” he says, “but at the beginning. We have but reached the shores of a great unexplored continent. We cannot turn back. There is no other direction to go but forward. It is man’s destiny to ponder on the riddle of existence and, as a by-product of his wonderment, to create a new life on this earth.” Mr. Kettering shares no brief with those who say we have advanced our technology too far, or that we should declare a moratorium on invention. A vigorous advocate of industrial preparedness, he maintains that we have more to fear from the unemployment of technology than from technological unemployment, since without the former we need never fear the latter.

Mr. Kettering’s widespread activities have led him into many fields of endeavor, although industrial research is still his most absorbing interest. The C. F. Kettering Foundation for the Study of Chlorophyll and Photosynthesis was founded in 1925 at Antioch College to study the problem of, as Mr. Kettering calls it, “why grass is green.” This research body has contributed much fundamental information concerning the structure of the chlorophyll molecule and the mechanism of photosynthesis. Another fundamental research undertaking sponsored by Mr. Kettering was the fever therapy research project at the Miami Valley Hospital, Dayton, Ohio. One of the products of this project was the invention of the Kettering Hyperthem, used in fever therapy work by many of the leading hospitals of the country. Regarding these fundamental research projects, Mr. Kettering says: “If we are trying to move something with a block and tackle, we have a stake out ahead. This advanced research is exactly like driving the advance stakes. We can’t pull our load very far with each stake, and just the minute we stop driving advance stakes, we can pull the load only up to where the last stake is. That is where progress stops, so we must always have new things way out ahead of the line whether we can see any practical advantage to them or not.”

Another far-reaching activity to which Mr. Kettering has given his support and active aid is the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, announced Aug. 8, 1945, in which he and Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., chairman of General Motors, linked themselves as cosponsors and active trustees. The project was given large financial support by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation which provided funds for research projects and a building erected as part of the Memorial Cancer Center in New York City.

“I was greatly honored by Mr. Sloan when he joined my name with his in setting up the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research,” said Mr. Kettering at the time the cancer project was announced. “My contribution to this most worthwhile effort will be largely to help supply the general types of techniques long employed in industrial scientific research. All this must be done through the medical profession. Mr. Sloan and I over the years have worked on many apparently hopeless industrial problems which today seem so simple that I am inclined to think we can apply some of our time-tried techniques to this age-old problem.”

When World War II broke out in Europe with the attack of Germany on Poland in September, 1939, the United States government enlisted Mr. Kettering’s talents to assist the armed service in developing and improving the new weapons of mechanized warfare. In August, 1940, the Secretary of Commerce announced the establishment of a National Inventors Council as a central government clearing house where inventions and suggestions of value to national defense might be submitted. Mr. Kettering was appointed chairman of this council. Associated with him were Dr. George Baekeland, Rear Admiral H. G. Bowen, Dr. William D. Collidge, Watson Davis, Dr. F. M. Feiker, Webster N. Jones, Lawrence Langner, Brig. Gen. Earl McFarland, Thomas Midgley, Jr., Dr. Fin Sparre, Maj. Gen. W. H. Tschappat, Orville Wright and Fred M. Zeder.

During the first six months of operation, the council received 16,000 communications containing inventions or inventive ideas. A surprisingly large proportion of these possessed sufficient merit to warrant serious consideration. A number was accepted for use by the Army and Navy and other government agencies.

In 1941 Mr. Kettering accepted from President Roosevelt appointment as chairman of the National Patent Planning Commission, a body authorized by Congress in 1940, which had as fellow members Chester C. Davis, Edward F. McGrady, Francis P. Gaines and Owen D. Young. It completed its study with a report in 1945. In addition to his duties with General Motors, Mr. Kettering is chairman of C. F. Kettering, Inc.; chairman of the board and director of the Flexible Co. director of the Ethyl Corporation; vice president and trustee, Charles F. Kettering Foundation; chairman of the board and director of the Winters National Bank & Trust Co.; director of the National Cash Register Co.; director of the Mead Corporation. He is a trustee of Antioch College, Ohio State University and the National Geographic Society, and president of the Thomas Alva Edison Foundation. He is intensely interested in the subject of progressive education.

Mr. Kettering is a Fellow of The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and National Academy of Sciences. He served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1945, and of the Society of Automotive Engineers in 1918.

He is also a member of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, American Chemical Society, American Forestry Association, American Geographical Society, American Museum of Natural History, American National Red Cross, American Social Hygiene Association, American Society of the French Legion of Honor, American Society of Civil Engineers, American Society for Testing Materials, American Society for Metals, American Physical Society, American Philosophical Society, Army Ordnance Association, Dayton Automobile Club, Engineering Society of Detroit, National Aeronautic Association, National Child Labor Association, National Recreation Association, National Gas Engine Association, New York Museum of Science and Industry, Newcomen Society, Ohio Academy of Science, Ohio State University Alumni Association, Societe de la Legion of Honor, and Society of Military Engineers.

Mr. Kettering was one of the founders of the Engineers Club of Dayton, and is part donor, along with Colonel Deeds, of the Club’s home. He has been active in supporting numerous scientific and educational organizations.

The University of Michigan conferred the degree of Doctor of Engineering on Mr. Kettering on June 18, 1929. The University of Cincinnati in 1928 honored him with the degree of Doctor of Science. His alma mater — Ohio State University — gave him the honorary degree of Doctor of Engineering on June 11, 1929.

He has been honored by degrees from thirty-two colleges and universities; by twenty-eight medals and awards including the Washington Award, the ASME Medal, and the John Fritz Medal; by numerous certificates and citations; and by more than fifteen honorary and life memberships.

On August 1, 1905, Mr. Kettering married Miss Olive Williams of Ashland, Ohio. He has one son, Eugene Williams Kettering, married and living in Hinsdale, Ill. Three grandchildren, a boy and two girls, make up the Kettering family.

Mrs. Kettering died in May, 1946.

Mr. Kettering resides at Ridgeleigh Terrace, Dayton, Ohio, and also maintains an apartment at the Sheraton-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit.

1963 My years with General Motors - Alfred P. Sloan

Chapter 19

NONAUTOMOTIVE:

DIESEL ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVES, APPLIANCES, AVIATION

General Motors manufactures not only cars and trucks, but diesel electric locomotives, household appliances, aviation engines, earth-moving equipment, and a variety of other durable goods; altogether, our nonautomotive business accounts for roughly 10 per cent of our civilian sales. And yet there have always been limits to our product diversification. Wehave never made anything except "durable products," and they have always, with minor exceptions, been connected with motors. Not even Mr. Durant, for all his expansion and diversification, ever suggested that we should stray into any broad field clearly outside the boundary suggested by our corporate name, General Motors.

No attempt will be made here to present detailed individual histories of our products outside of the automobile. The stories of our pioneering in the diesel business, of our development of the Frigidaire line of products, and of our aviation business are the subjects of this chapter.

It would be nice to be able to trace a coherent pattern in General Motors' ventures outside the automobile business, but chance and other factors that entered the picture make it difficult to do so. We had, of course, some natural interest in diversification which might afford us a hedge against any decline in automobile sales. But we never had a master plan for nonautomotive ventures; we got into them for different reasons, and we were very lucky at some crucial points. We got into the diesel field, for example, because of Mr. Kettering's special interest in diesel engines, dating back as early as 1913, when he was experimenting with diesel power in an attempt to find a suitable engine for the generator in a farm-lighting set he wanted to manufacture. Mr. Durant put General Motors in the refrigerator business for reasons of his own; but it is clear, as I shall show, that we would have abandoned Frigidaire in its earliest years had it not been for an odd combination of events. And we got into aviation because we thought the small airplane would be an important competitor of the automobile.

It is worthy of note, I believe, that these were relatively new products at the time we first invested in them. There was no diesel locomotive capable of providing mainline service on American railroads; the electric refrigerator was only an impractical gadget, and the future of aviation was anybody's guess. In other words, we did not simply use our financial and engineering resources to "take over" new products outside the automobile business. We got in early—as long as forty-five years ago—and helped develop them. Our operations in these fields have been expanded, but we have gone into nothing entirely new in more recent years except for the purchase in 1953 of the Euclid Road Machinery Company (manufacturer of earth-moving equipment), and war and defense production.

Diesel Electric Locomotives

General Motors entered the locomotive industry in a small way in the early 1930s. At the time, railroads in the United States seemed to have very little interest in diesel locomotives except for special switch-engine use. Yet in less than a decade the diesel was outselling the steam locomotive, and General Motors was outselling all other locomotive manufacturers combined. Because we led the diesel revolution, with tremendous savings to the railroad industry, the Electro-Motive Division today enjoys a large part of the locomotive market.

There were, I think, two principal reasons for this rather spectacular progress. The first was simply that we were more tenacious in our efforts to produce lightweight, high-speed diesel engines suitable for over-the-road use on American railroads. The second reason was that we brought to the locomotive industry some of the manufacturing, engineering, and marketing concepts of the automobile industry. Until we began making diesels, locomotives had always been produced on a custom basis, with the railroads specifying their requirements to the manufacturers in considerable detail so that virtually no two locomotives on American railroads were alike. But almost from the beginning we offered the railroads a standard locomotive—one that we were able to produce in volume at a relatively low price. In addition we guaranteed performance at a lower net cost per ton mile than was possible with the use of steam engines, and we made good our guarantees by maintaining a service organization and providing standardized replacement parts. This program revolutionized the locomotive industry and secured our own place in it.

There was, of course, nothing new about the principle of the diesel engine at the time that General Motors first became interested in it. Rudolph Diesel, a German inventor, received the original patent for this kind of engine in 1892 and built a successful unit with one cylinder and twenty-five horsepower in 1897. As early as 1898 a sixty-horsepower, two-cylinder diesel unit was built in this country. These early devices embodied essentially the same compression-ignition principle as the engine in a modern diesel locomotive.

The four-cycle diesel engine works this way: On the first suction stroke of the piston, the engine draws in air and nothing else. The next stroke of the piston compresses the air to something like 500 pounds per square inch, creating a temperature of around 1000 Fahrenheit. Just before the end of the compression stroke, oil is injected as a fine spray into the combustion chamber under high pressure. The hot air ignites this fuel. The third and fourth strokes of the piston provide the power and exhaust—as in a gasoline engine. However, the diesel requires neither a carburetor nor an electric ignition, and thus has an edge in simplicity over the gasoline engine.

As this description indicates, the diesel converts its fuel directly into a source of energy. In this respect it is unlike the steam engine, whose fuel is used only to create steam, and unlike the gasoline engine, which vaporizes its fuel before it can be ignited. Both of these engines are less efficient than the diesel—which has in fact the highest thermal efficiency of any heat engine in everyday use. The modern diesel uses a distilled petroleum fuel oil, but other fuels have been used in the past. Rudolph Diesel himself had intended to run his engine on powdered coal, but his engineer associates persuaded him at the outset to use petroleum oil in order to avoid the problem of scoring. Powdered coal was used later experimentally by others attempting to follow Diesel's original intentions, and other fuels have been tried. But petroleum oil remains the standard diesel fuel.

Despite its great efficiency, the diesel engine was for many years quite limited in practical use. With few exceptions the engines were large, heavy, and slow running, and so found their greatest application in power stations, pumping, and marine use. They weighed 200 or 300 pounds per horsepower, and this, indeed, was the heart of the problem—to build a powerful, fast-running diesel of relatively small size.

I have said there was nothing new about the principle of the diesel engine. I might add that there were no unknown principles concerning any component part of the diesel-powered locomotive that General Motors created. What was lacking was the imagination, the initiative, and the talent to work out the problem to the point of practicability.

Europeans had been working on this development since the second decade of this century and had some diesel railcars and locomotives in operation by 1920. By 1933 a few U.S. diesel manufacturers had successfully built a number of diesel engines for switcher service. Since weight was an advantage in switchers, and since they showed economies over steam in operation, they met with some success. However, attempts to build diesel engines for mainline passenger and freight applications in this country were not successful, since in these cases weight, power, and size are critical.

Bringing the diesel engine down to more manageable proportions, with a low weight-per-horsepower ratio, was the principal concern of our engineers. In a large organization like General Motors it is seldom possible to assign to any one person the credit—or blame—for initiating some major undertaking. But in the case of the diesel, Charles F. Kettering comes very close to being the whole story. The General Motors Research Corporation, forerunner of our present Research Laboratories, was testing diesel engines, under Mr. Kettering's close scrutiny, as early as 1921. After Mr. Kettering bought himself a diesel-powered yacht in April 1928 these engines became a major preoccupation of his. As anyone who knew him might have guessed, when on his yacht he was more often tinkering in the engine room than relaxing on deck. He was already convinced that the diesel did not have to be unreasonably large and heavy. I became interested in the possible development of the diesel engine for General Motors at about the same time. If my memory serves me correctly, I remember dropping in one day at the Research Laboratories in Detroit and saying to Mr. Kettering: "Ket, why is it, recognizing the high efficiency of the diesel cycle, that it has never been more generally used?" In his characteristic way he said the reason was that the engine would not run in the way that the engineers wanted it to run. I then said to him: "Very well—we are now in the diesel engine business. You tell us how the engine should run and I will see that available manufacturing facilities are provided to capitalize the program." Of course, saying that we were in the diesel business was a manner of speaking. I meant I would support him in the organization.

In 1928 Mr. Kettering and an engineering group at the Research Laboratories began a series of comprehensive tests on the diesel engines then being offered by various manufacturers. An analysis of these tests, combined with a thorough study of current scientific literature on diesels, finally led Mr. Kettering to conclude that the solution to his problem was the so-called two-cycle diesel engine.

The two-cycle engine was nothing new at that time. Indeed, the truly remarkable feature of Mr. Kettering's conclusion was his conviction that the two-cycle principle was ideally suited to the smaller diesel engines. Though it had been thoroughly explored before, it generally had been rejected as unworkable except in large, slowspeed engines.

In the two-cycle engine the intake of fresh air and the exhaust of burned gases take place at the same time. One stroke out of every two is a power stroke instead of one out of four, as in the four-cycle engine. The result is an engine that has less than one fifth the weight and one sixth the size of its predecessor four-cycle engine of equivalent power output. But this smaller device created some awesome engineering problems. For one thing, the two-cycle engine as developed by Mr. Kettering called for much greater precision in the fuel-injection system. Specifically, what the Research Laboratories were called upon to produce—and finally did produce —was a unit fuel injector whose parts fitted with a clearance of 30 to 60 millionths of an inch and an injector pump which built up pressures as high as 30,000 pounds per square inch as it forced fuel through holes 10 to 13 thousandths of an inch in diameter drilled in the injector tip. The two-cycle engine also has to have an external air pump. This became another major project, but finally Research delivered what was needed: a light, compact device able to pump large quantities of air at a pressure of about three to six pounds.

By the end of 1930 it was clear that the two-cycle engine was practical and that Mr. Kettering had achieved a major breakthrough in diesel technology. It was also clear that the time had come to provide the manufacturing facilities I had promised him. We looked around for the special facilities that were needed. Our buildup consisted principally of the purchase of two companies: the Winton Engine Company and the Electro-Motive Engineering Company, both of Cleveland, Ohio.

Winton was a manufacturer of diesel engines, primarily for marine uses (it had built Mr. Kettering's second set of yacht engines), and also of certain kinds of large gasoline engines. Electro-Motive was an engineering, design, and sales firm with no manufacturing facilities of its own. The two firms had had an intimate business relationship for almost a decade. During that time Electro-Motive and Winton had built a substantial business and reputation in the design and sale of gas-electric railcars, primarily for use on short-haul runs. Building the engines for these railcars was a major part of Winton's business during most of the 1920s. Relative to steam, however, the operating economies of gas cars kept diminishing, and toward the end of the decade Electro-Motive began to find itself in trouble trying to continue to sell the gas-electric car, which in turn had its effect on Winton.

Against this background Winton and Electro-Motive began, around 1928 and 1929, to look seriously into the possibility of using diesel power on the railroads. Harold Hamilton, then president of Electro-Motive, encountered the same problems of fuel injection that Mr. Kettering was then wrestling with. Mr. Hamilton was also trying to develop a small diesel engine. With the technology then available to him, the smallest diesel he could build was one weighing about sixty pounds per horsepower. A locomotive, he felt, required an engine weighing no more than twenty pounds per horsepower, with a crankshaft speed of about 800 revolutions per minute. Though there were a few available diesel engines which closely matched these specifications, Mr. Hamilton did not feel that they could stand up to the performance and reability requirements which he felt were necessary for successful railroad application.

Furthermore, Mr. Hamilton realized that the diesel he wanted would require metal tubes and joints able to last for long periods of time even when they had to carry fuel under pressures of 6000 and 7000 pounds to the square inch. Winton was not able to develop this kind of metallurgy and Mr. Hamilton knew of no place in the industry where it was available. He finally concluded that it would take about $10 million of venture capital to solve his and Winton's problems—perhaps $5 million to overcome the technological obstacles, and another $5 million or thereabouts to provide the plant and equipment needed for manufacturing facilities.

It was speedily made apparent to Mr. Hamilton, and also to George W. Codrington, the president of Winton, that they would not be able to raise the money at the banks and that there was certainly no such venture capital anywhere in the railroad industry. (Neither the carriers nor the locomotive manufacturers showed enough interest in the diesel to undertake the research necessary.)

At about this time, however, Mr. Kettering became acquainted with Mr. Codrington as the result of ordering Winton engines for his second yacht. He bought these engines simply because Codrington agreed, though reluctantly, to put in a new kind of injector that one of the Winton engineers was developing at the time, and which Mr. Kettering felt held great promise. I don't know who first suggested the idea of Winton's coming into General Motors. In any event, we began to negotiate formally in the late summer of 1929. Agreement on the purchase of Winton had almost been reached in October when the great market crash temporarily confused the picture.

But there was never any serious question in our minds that Winton was a good buy for us. For one thing, we were not at this point certain about the future of the U.S. automobile market, which had not been expanding during the late 1920s. Consequently, we had a natural interest in any enterprise within our scope that offered us a reasonable opportunity to diversify.

The case for buying Winton was stated by John L. Pratt, vice president, in a memorandum which he addressed to the Operations and Finance committees, dated October 21, 1929, as follows:

We have had under consideration for some time past the possible purchase of the Winton Engine Company located at Cleveland, Ohio, which subject has been informally discussed at previous meetings. It is believed that the Diesel Engine development in this country has arrived at a point where it has become commercial and is probably on the eve of considerable expansion. The Winton Engine Company is unquestionably the outstanding Diesel engine manufacturer in the United States . . .

The Winton Company has a capable management and would not require any additional personnel immediately. If the business continues to expand, as we believe it will, we may think it desirable to add to its personnel another good executive, perhaps as Assistant General Manager or Sales Manager. . .

. . . The purchase of this company will give us a vehicle for capitalizing the developments of our research organization along engine lines and will assist materially in keeping us abreast of Diesel engine developments. The business should also be reasonably profitable, and if expansion continues, as most of our engineers believe it will, we should ultimately make a good return on the investment required to purchase the Winton Company. . .

Finally, in June 1930 the Winton operations became a part of General Motors with Mr. Codrington continuing as president. Winton's principal market continued to be in large marine engines.¹

Five months after the Winton acquisition we also acquired Electro-Motive and again the old management of the company continued to run its affairs. During the negotiation to acquire Electro-Motive, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Kettering continued to hold many lengthy discussions about the challenge of the lightweight diesel engine. In his 1955 testimony before a Senate subcommittee Mr. Hamilton described the tremendous enthusiasm of Mr. Kettering for the job of developing a diesel engine: ".

. . it was just like ringing a bell to a fire horse," he recalled. Mr. Hamilton, in fact, made it clear that he was not attracted to General Motors merely by the corporation's great economic strength. ".

. . we had more than that in General Motors," he commented. ".

. . of the companies that I knew at that time, many of them with plenty of financial resources, none of them had the mental approach to this problem that was necessary to take it at that stage that it was in then, and the courage that went along with it to move it to its point of success. At least that was our opinion in the matter."

For a while Winton and Electro-Motive operated about as before. Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Kettering both had the impression that it would take a considerable length of time to build a commercially acceptable diesel engine for the railroads. Meanwhile, Mr. Kettering devoted his efforts, in large measure, to perfecting the two-cycle diesel engine. By 1932 Mr. Kettering decided he could build a two-cycle, eight-cylinder engine that would produce about 600 horsepower. Since Mr. Kettering's new engine would have a good edge over existing four-cycle engines in the 600-horsepower range, particularly in the weight-per-horsepower ratio, his engine seemed worth building.

At about this time we were planning our exhibit for the Century of Progress World's Fair, which was scheduled to open in Chicago in 1933. Our exhibit was to be a dramatic display—an automobile assembly line in actual operation, producing Chevrolet passenger cars. We needed a source of power for the assembly line and decided that two of Mr. Kettering's proposed 600-horsepower diesel engines would do the job.

When we first conceived the idea of powering our World's Fair display with the new diesel engine, what we had in mind was to get a good long look at the engine under actual operating conditions. We were primarily concerned with proving that Mr. Kettering's basic design was a good and practical one; we did not anticipate that the commercial applications would come as soon as they did. But before the engine for the display was even finished, our perspective on this matter was drastically altered.

What changed it, principally, was the sudden interest of one railroad president—Ralph Budd of the Burlington—in the diesel engine. Mr. Budd was then hoping to build a new, streamlined, lightweight passenger train that would be dramatic in appearance and economical in operation. One day in the fall of 1932 he stopped off in Cleveland to see Mr. Hamilton, who told him about General Motors' diesel experiments and put him in touch with Mr. Kettering. Mr. Budd was excited about the prospects.

He paid a visit to Detroit and to the General Motors Research Laboratories. Mr. Kettering showed him the experimental two-cycle engine but warned him that the eight-cylinder model was not yet built and certainly required a great deal more development work before it could be considered seriously as a source of locomotive power. Mr. Budd was told about General Motors' plans to test the engine at the World's Fair.

When the fair finally opened, our diesel engines were visible, through a plate-glass window, to anyone who cared to inspect them. However, we were still apprehensive about them, and the publicity man for our exhibit was under strict orders to say nothing about them—even though they were, in a sense, the most dramatic feature of our exhibit. The engines were unheralded, then, but Mr. Budd, at least, paid close attention to them during the entire fair. He was well aware of the difficulties we were having with the engines. He knew that every night one or two engineers had to work on them to ensure that they would still be functioning the next day. He knew the opinion of Mr. Kettering's son, Eugene, who was in charge of the maintenance operation, and who later commented that "the only part of that engine that worked well was the dipstick."

Nevertheless, Mr. Budd continued to press us for a diesel engine that he could use on his Burlington Zephyr. He became more insistent than ever when, in 1933, the Union Pacific publicly announced its plans to build a streamlined train. The Union Pacific was planning only a small, three-car affair without any real locomotive—the power car was to be an integral part of the train itself.

The power was derived from a twelve-cylinder, 600-horsepower gasoline engine, which was built by Winton. There were no major technological innovations in this Union Pacific train; but pictures of it were widely distributed, the public reception was quite favorable, and suddenly the nation was very much interested in streamliners. All of this served to fortify Mr. Budd's desire, which was intense anyway, to put his own streamliner in business. But he still wanted diesel power.

We would have preferred to spend another year or two taking the "bugs" out of Mr. Kettering's engine, but Mr. Budd's insistence finally won us over. In June 1933 we agreed to build an eight-cylinder, 6oo-horsepower diesel engine for his Pioneer Zephyr. When it was put in test operation in April 1934 it broke down continually, as we had feared. However, the defects were gradually ironed out of it, and in June 1934 Mr. Budd ordered two more 201A General Motors Diesels, as they were called, for his Twin Zephyrs. Meanwhile, the Union Pacific had not waited for the delivery of its streamliner. Before this, it had placed a new order with Winton in late June 1933, this time for a twelve-cylinder, 900-horsepower diesel for a six-car articulated sleeping-car train; and again in February 1934 the Union Pacific ordered six 1200-horsepower diesel passenger units for its "City" series.

These early diesel-powered streamliners were spectacular successes. In a memorable test run from Denver to Chicago, the Burlington Zephyr averaged 78 miles per hour for a total running time of only thirteen hours and ten minutes. The Union Pacific "City" trains cut the running time from the West Coast to Chicago from over sixty to less than forty hours. Operating costs to the railroads were lower and passenger patronage was considerably higher. Both of our customers immediately began calling upon us for more power so they could lengthen their trains. In May 1935 we began delivering the Union Pacific's 1200-horsepower diesels; we furnished the Burlington with two engines of 1200-horsepower apiece. These engines were able to pull twelve-car trains.

One day early in 1934 Mr. Kettering and Mr. Hamilton paid me a visit, and we got to talking about the diesel. Mr. Hamilton, who was always in close touch with the railroad people, told me that our engines were considered by them to be a vast success. However, he said, the railroads were beginning to ask General Motors to supply them with all-purpose diesel-powered locomotives instead of merely engines for power cars. Mr. Kettering indicated that he would like to undertake the development of an experimental diesel-powered locomotive. I inquired how much money he thought he would need. Mr. Kettering said that he thought it might take as much as $500,000. I told him that my own experience with new development projects suggested strongly that he could not give us a new locomotive on such a comparatively modest sum. "I know," he replied amiably, "but I figure if we spend that much, you'll come through with the rest." He got the money.

Actually, we were a long way from being in the locomotive business at that time. Our only production facilities were those for making engines in the Winton plant, and even these were somewhat outmoded; we had nothing at all for building electrical transmission equipment and locomotive bodies. Accordingly, we decided early in 1935 to build our own factory at La Grange, Illinois. This plant originally produced only the body of the locomotive—the cab and the truck—with the engines coming from Winton and the other components from outside suppliers, as before. But the La Grange plant was designed so that we could expand its operations to produce and assemble all the parts of a locomotive. We began this expansion soon after the plant was completed. By 1938 La Grange was a fully integrated locomotive plant.

Our early experience with the diesel was, as I have indicated, in the passenger-locomotive field. But in the mid-thirties Mr. Hamilton and his group decided that there was a great economic potential for diesel-powered switching locomotives. At that time one of our competitors was offering the railroads a diesel-powered switcher that weighed about one hundred tons and sold as high as $80,000. The locomotive was, in large measure, built to the customer's specifications. It was Mr. Hamilton's contention that if the customer was willing to accept a standard diesel switcher "right off the shelf," then we could market one for $72,000. Under his prodding we began to build these switchers. Indeed, we put fifty of them in production before we had one firm order.

The importance we attached to this new policy may be gauged by a memorandum written on December 12, 1935. It was from Mr. Pratt to me, and it said, at one point: There is one fundamental policy which we believe will have to be maintained, namely, that the Electro-Motive Corporation will build a standardized product and not undertake to build to the many different standards and specifications on which each railroad demands to purchase; and our recommendation is that the policy of building a standard product be given at least a fair trial before we yield to obtaining business by letting each railroad write its own specifications as to what the locomotive should be.

As it turned out, the issue was settled very quickly. Our first batch of switchers was sold easily, deliveries beginning in May 1936. Although the margin of profit was small at first, it was enough to make a big difference in Electro-Motive's profit picture. Mr. Hamilton promised the railroads that, as our volume in switchers increased, we would pass along our operating economies to them in the form of price reductions. By 1943 when the War Production Board took General Motors out of the switcher field and directed us to concentrate entirely on freight locomotives, we had built 768 switchers; and the price to our customers on the 600-horsepower switchers was down to $59,750 by October 1940.

Meanwhile, our passenger-locomotive business expanded rapidly. By 1940 we had about 130 diesel-powered passenger locomotives in service on railroads all over the country. We began to build freight locomotives in 1939. There was an interruption during the early part of World WarII when our plant was virtually out of the locomotive business while producing LST engines for the Navy. At this point the reader may be wondering what the rest of the locomotive industry was doing while we were pushing ahead with our diesel program. With only a few exceptions and qualifications, the answer is that the rest of the industry was sticking with steam power. Though a few attempts were made, in this country and Canada, to build diesel passenger locomotives before 1940, production never advanced beyond the prototypes. (In 1940 a diesel-powered passenger locomotive built by a competitor finally went into service.) Outside of one attempt made by a group of builders in the late twenties, no manufacturer in this country, other than ourselves, brought out a diesel-powered freight locomotive until after World War II. Aside from switchers, it might be said, we were first everywhere on the railroads of this country with diesel power.

To suggest, as a Senate subcommittee did in 1955, that we shoved ourselves into the locomotive market by main force, is to ignore the fact that other manufacturers failed to see the potential of the diesel. As Mr. Kettering once remarked during another congressional investigation, our biggest advantage in the locomotive industry was the fact that our competitors thought we were crazy. Yet the superiority of diesel power over steam was apparent from the beginning. Rudolph Diesel first mentioned this superiority in railroad applications in 1894 and numerous times afterward. During the late 1920s engineering and railroad journals were carrying full reports and operating-cost data on diesel locomotives then in operation in Europe. To anyone who would listen, we could prove that the diesel offered smoother, faster, cleaner service, and an enormous saving in fuel and other operating costs. The railroads, which were eager to trim their operating costs in every way possible dur-ing the 1930s, listened eagerly; the other locomotive manufacturers continued to regard the diesel as a sort of passing fad. This explains why a group of long-established, economically strong locomotive manufacturers, with strong ties to their customers, were so easily outdistanced by one newcomer to the business. It was not until the mid-1950s that the building of steam locomotives in this country stopped completely, with production in the closing years going largely to export. Less than a hundred steam locomotives remain in operation in the United States today. Diesel power alone is now being purchased by the railroads, except for electric locomotives used on electric-powered roads. This revolution in the railroad industry in the United States was made very largely by General Motors.

It is hard to make precise statements about the future of the diesel locomotive business, but it appears that the market in the United States will be somewhat smaller in the years ahead. Railroad passenger service is being discontinued in many areas of the country, and even freight carloadings have declined somewhat in recent years. There were about 60 per cent more steam locomotives in service during the mid-1930s than there are diesels today. This fact reflects the greater power and operating availability of the diesel, of course, but it also reflects the depressed condition of the railroads.

Overseas there still are some 100,000 steam locomotives in operation. These eventually will be replaced by diesel-electric, diesel-hydraulic, and electric locomotives. The potential market for diesel-electric locomotives overseas is approximately 40,000 units. The Electro-Motive Division has developed a wide range of lightweight, restricted-clearance locomotives to meet this export demand. Where applicable, standard domestic locomotives have been sold overseas.

Over four thousand General Motors locomotives are now in service in thirty-seven countries outside the United States—nine countries, including Canada, in the Western Hemisphere and twenty-eight countries of the Eastern Hemisphere.

The U.S. market is now a replacement, reconditioning, and upgrading rather than a new-user market. The so-called upgrading market is, of course, an increasingly important one today, and I do not mean to minimize it. Still, the industry in the United States has been dieselized; the revolution is over. At the same time, it is just under way overseas.

Frigidaire

Despite a lack of enthusiasm at the highest levels of the corporation in the early days, the Frigidaire Division has grown steadily for about forty-five years and has become a major factor in the appliance industry. The Frigidaire line today includes electric household refrigerators, food freezers, ice-cube makers, automatic clothes washers and dryers, electric ranges, water heaters, dishwashers, food-waste disposers, air-conditioning equipment, and commercial laundry and dry-cleaning equipment. Frigidaire now has about ten thousand outlets in the United States.

The curious story of how General Motors got into the refrigerator business begins in June 1918 when Mr. Durant, who was then president of the corporation, purchased the Guardian Frigerator Company of Detroit. Mr. Durant made the purchase in his own name and with his own funds; the precise amount was $56,366.50. The company passed from Mr. Durant to General Motors in May 1919 at the same price. It was a small enterprise of no great substance. He soon renamed the company the Frigidaire Corporation, and also gave the name Frigidaire to the rather crude, primitive device which was then its sole product. Mr. Durant's motives in this transaction are not within my knowledge. But he was, of course, a man of boundless enthusiasms and great curiosity; and it is easy to understand that an "iceless frigerator"—as the Guardian product was called—would excite both of these qualities. I can only admire his gift for being in touch with future developments in this as well as the automotive field.

While I had no personal knowledge of Mr. Durant's transaction at the time it took place, John L. Pratt has told me that in his opinion more than enthusiasm for a new appliance underlay the purchase. He says that Mr. Durant was concerned about the prospect of the automobile business being declared unessential to our World War I mobilization effort, and was looking for an "essential" business to take the place of civilian automobiles. Given the great national effort to conserve food during World War I, a refrigerator company might be considered essential. However, the government made no effort to end automobile production; and in November, five months after his purchase had been made, the war ended.

The original Guardian refrigerator had been built by a Dayton mechanical engineer named Alfred Mellowes in 1915. The following year he organized the Guardian Frigerator Company in Detroit to manufacture and sell his device. Between April 1, 1916, and February 28, 1918, Guardian built and sold only thirty-four refrigerators, all of which were installed in homes in the Detroit area.

Guardian's manufacturing facilities in 1917 consisted of only two lathes, one drill press, one shaper, one power saw, and a hand vacuum pump. In addition to manufacturing the "frigerators," Mr. Mellowes personally serviced them; he kept in close touch with the purchasers, visiting each of them every two or three weeks. As we ascertained at the time we bought Frigidaire, most of these early Guardian customers were pleased with the product. Many of them had, in fact, despite the numerous service problems, invested in Mr. Mellowes' company. But as investors, it appeared, they were less happily situated than they were as consumers. During its first twenty-three months Guardian showed a loss of $19,582. In the three months just before Mr. Durant bought it the company lost another $14,580, bringing its total deficit to $34,162. Less than forty refrigerators had been built and sold in the entire period. It is not difficult to understand why the original shareholders were happy to sell out.

When Frigidaire passed into General Motors, we tooled up in our Northway plant in Detroit to manufacture Frigidaire Model A—machine which was identical to the old Guardian except for minor mechanical changes. Our miscalculation about the product's suitability for mass consumption was speedily brought home to us. Model A, and its successors in the first few years, remained a luxury product. What was worse, we could not get the "bugs" out of the machine, which broke down repeatedly. Our efforts to introduce a sales and service organization into a number of cities outside of Detroit were largely unsuccessful. It appeared that the machine really needed the kind of steady personal service that Mr. Mellowes had provided his small group of customers; but this kind of service was obviously impossible in a product intended for a mass market. After about a year and a half we seriously considered whether the Frigidaire operation might not be jettisoned. Something of our frame of mind may be sensed from the minutes of a meeting which took place in my office on February 9, 1921. The summary of my remarks includes these comments:

Frigidaire Corporation: Located at Detroit, Mich, and makes Frigidaires which up to the present have been a failure. Models have been changed frequently in order to create demand, but without success. Branches were opened at various points which have since been discontinued. . . Loss to date about $1,520,000. Inventory is about $1,100,000 —total loss expected to run about $2,500,000.

In a year when General Motors was in serious need of operating capital, the continued losses and relatively high inventory could not long be tolerated. And it is possible that Frigidaire would somehow have been disposed of then except for one fortuitous circumstance, upon which hangs a story. In an earlier chapter I told how General Motors in 1919 acquired the Dayton properties with which Mr. Kettering was associated. Among these properties were the Domestic Engineering Company and the Dayton Metal Products Company.

The Domestic Engineering Company—later renamed the Delco-Light Company—was a manufacturer of home-lighting plants, which were sold mostly to farmers.

The Dayton Metal Products Company, an armament manufacturing concern, had begun research in the refrigeration field early in 1918 as part of a program designed to obtain a product which might keep the company in operation when the war ended and the armament business ceased.

The two enterprises—Domestic Engineering and Dayton MetalProducts—were in the appliance business in some items, and were preparing to expand into some other items. With these enterprises General Motors also acquired all of the refrigeration developments of Mr. Kettering's research group. This informal research organization continued operations at Dayton until June 12, 1920, when the subsidiary General Motors Research Corporation was organized. General Motors thus acquired some outstanding engineers in this field, as well as the management and sales ability of Richard H. Grant, who was to contribute importantly to the success of Frigidaire in the early and middle 1920s.

All of these factors came together in our decision during the slump of 1921 to continue with Frigidaire. It was clear that we had at Dayton the research background and an organization to back up the Frigidaire development. Delco-Light had available a fine sales force spread over large areas of the country, and some unused manufacturing capacity which could be made suitable for the produc-tion of refrigerators. So we moved Frigidaire to Dayton, combined its operations with those of Delco-Light, and started on a new course in the refrigerator industry on a larger scale than theretofore.

The decision proved to be a sound one. Frigidaire's heavy losses in 1921 were reduced steadily in the next two years, and in 1924 the operation showed a profit for the first time. Meanwhile, production rose rapidly. Only a few more than a thousand units had been produced in 1921 at the Northway plant; about 2100 were sold in 1922, the first full year of operations at Dayton. The figure rose to 4700 in 1923, 20,200 in 1924, and 63,500 in 1925. By the last year, Frigidaire was established as a leading factor in the new refrigerator industry; it represented, I believe, more than half of the market. By 1927 it was apparent that Frigidaire was becoming much too big to be operated within Delco-Light, and in January 1928 it was removed from that company. Part of its operations had already been moved to nearby Moraine, Ohio, where we had a plant available. Frigidaire became a division of General Motors in December 1933- Once we had decided to build up Frigidaire we made a number of major ground-breaking advances in the design and manufacture of the machine. Without these contributions, it is safe to say, popular acceptance of the refrigerator would have been delayed for a considerable period of time.

As I have indicated, the Guardian organization originally had no real research staff outside of Mr. Mellowes himself. Even in 1921, when Frigidaire was moved into Delco-Light, there were only twenty-odd engineers, modelmakers, testers, and the like engaged in this work. We realized that the whole future of Frigidaire depended on our ability to crack several research problems, and to produce a machine that would operate safely, economically, and dependably; hence we placed great emphasis on research. We soon managed to get rid of the space-consuming brine tank and watercooled compressor used on the original Guardian machine; these devices, which were major sources of refrigerator breakdowns, were replaced by a direct-expansion coil and a two-cylinder, air-cooled compressor. In the early machines, food was sometimes contaminated when moisture leaked into the refrigerator; we overcame this problem by introducing asphalt-and-cork sealing. We reduced the weight of the machine and considerably improved its appearance when we introduced the all-porcelain cabinet in 1927. All of these improvements were instrumental in the great expansion of the Frigidaire market during the 1920s. Another major cause of this expansion was our ability to get prices down. The 1922 B-9 wood refrigerator with brine tank and water-cooled compressors had a net weight of 834 pounds and sold for $714. In contrast, the M-9 Frigidaire model of 1926, a steel cabinet fitted with an air-cooled compressor and direct-cooling coils, had a net weight of 362 pounds and sold for $468.

During the 1919-26 period no other manufacturer or organization made any appreciable contribution to the refrigeration business in research, engineering development, mass-production methods, or distribution and servicing techniques. Our biggest research problem in Frigidaire, and the corporation's great ultimate contribution, concerned the refrigerant itself. The fact was, during the 1920s, that the refrigerants used by Frigidaire, and by all its leading competitors, had some health hazards; fumes from the refrigerating agents were toxic and in a few cases had actually caused the death of persons who breathed them. Because of the health hazard, these early refrigerators were sometimes kept on the back porch rather than in the kitchen; hospitals generally could not use them at all. We believed that sulphur dioxide, the agent first used in our refrigerators, was the least dangerous of the known refrigerants—principally because its distinctly irritating odor served as a warning to anyone breathing it. Nevertheless, it was clear that, ultimately, something better had to be found.

In 1928 Mr. Kettering, who was then director of General Motors Research Laboratories, initiated a major assault on the whole problem of the refrigerating agent. He commissioned one of his former associates in General Motors, Thomas Midgley, Jr.—the man who had developed tetraethyl lead—to find a new agent. After a series of conferences between Mr. Midgley, Mr. Kettering, and Frigidaire executives, they agreed that the refrigerant they were looking for should meet certain requirements. These were:

Of primary importance:

(1) To have a suitable boiling point.

(2) To be nonpoisonous.

(3) To be nonflammable.

(4) To have a distinct but not unpleasant odor.

Of secondary importance:

(5) To be immiscible with lubricating oils.

(6) To be relatively inexpensive.

These "secondary" requirements, it was understood, would be met so long as they did not conflict with the primary requirements. But there was agreement that all of the first four specifications had to be met before the electric refrigerator could be regarded as a complete success. A study of all existing literature was made at the Research Laboratories, under Mr. Kettering's direction, for compounds winch might meet these specifications. This study pointed out the possibility of using fluorinated hydrocarbons. All through 1928 Mr. Midgley and some associates, especially Dr. A. L. Henne, worked in a private laboratory in Dayton in an effort to find a suitable refrigerant. They soon came to believe that some of the chlorofluoro derivatives of methane might do the job. By the end of the year Mr. Midgley had determined that dichloro-difluoro-methane, called Freon-12, would meet all four of the primary requirements agreed upon. It would not meet either of the two secondary requirements, but since it was clearly the best refrigerant available, Mr. Midgley and his associates began working on the development of processes for manufacturing the compound. A pilot plant was designed and put in operation at Dayton during the fall and winter of 1929-30.

In the fall of 1929 we knew as much about the Freon-12 refrigerant as we had to know. Frigidaire chemists had made exhaustive studies of the compound's physical properties. They had determined the corrosion effects of Freon-12 on high- and low-carbon steels,aluminum, copper, monel metal, tin, zinc, tin-lead solders, andother metals and alloys used in refrigerating systems. They had examined the effect of Freon-12 on different foods, and on flowers and furs. The tests were satisfactory to us. At the 1930 meeting of the American Chemical Society, Mr. Midgley read a paper on Freon-12 and publicly demonstrated that it was nonflammable; he proved that it was nontoxic by inhaling some of it himself.

As I have indicated, Freon-12 did not meet either of Mr. Midg-ley's two secondary requirements. It was quite expensive, in fact. Whereas sulphur dioxide had cost six cents a pound, the initial price of Freon-12 was sixty-one cents in 1931. Even now it costs more than sulphur dioxide did then—but health-department codes do not allow the use of the latter.

Since we regarded our new compound as the safest refrigerant available, we offered it to our competitors from the beginning, and by the mid-ig30s Freon-12 was used almost universally in electric refrigerators. Even today, no better refrigerant has been found. By 1932 or thereabouts it was unmistakably clear to us that in Frigidaire we had a property of vast growth potential. In 1929 we had manufactured our one-millionth Frigidaire, and three years later we had manufactured 2,250,000. Our success in developing Freon-12 removed the last roadblock standing in the way of the refrigerator industry. But while it was clear that Frigidaire and the industry would expand, it was also clear that Frigidaire's share of this great market must inevitably decline somewhat. Several companies would begin making refrigerators toward the end of the 1920s. Kelvinator was, of course, a pioneer. The original Kelvinator Corporation entered the electric-refrigerator field in 1914 and was the first enterprise to manufacture mechanical refrigerators for household use on a commercial scale. General Electric and Norge entered the field in 1927, Westinghouse in 1930. By 1940, the last prewar year of unregulated commercial production, Frigidaire's share of the refrigerator market—which had been above 50 per cent in the 1920s—was down to 20 to 25 per cent. But our smaller percentage represented a larger volume. Shipment of our refrigerators rose from some 300,000 in 1929 to 620,000 in 1940.

During the years 1926-36 a number of Frigidaire's competitors gained an advantage over us in the marketing area. They began to make and sell radios, electric ranges, washers, ironers, and dishwashers, while Frigidaire concentrated on refrigerators. In 1937 we added electric kitchen ranges to the Frigidaire line, and a few years later, window-type room air-conditioners. But these did little to overcome Frigidaire's competitive disadvantage. Obviously, families and home builders who wanted to purchase a full complement of household appliances would buy from one of the manufacturers who offered a complete line.

We failed to expand the Frigidaire line in the years before the war. As early as 1935, for example, Mr. Pratt had suggested that Frigidaire get more actively into air-conditioning; but his suggestion did not register on us, and the proposal was not then adopted.

During the war we made a review of Frigidaire's prospects and concluded that it would no longer be feasible to operate in the appliance field on a limited basis. A survey of Frigidaire dealers conducted prior to the end of the war served to fortify this conviction. In response to the survey question, "Should Frigidaire manufacture additional appliance products?" 99 per cent of the dealers who were polled replied, "Yes." The dealers indicated that, principally, they wanted automatic washing machines, refrigerator-freezer combinations, conventional washing machines, food freezers, gas ranges, and ironing machines—in that order.

Most of these appliances and several others were added by Frigidaire in the postwar years. The following list shows the years in which we introduced new household appliances:

Home food freezers 1947

Automatic washers 1947

Dryers 1947

Automatic ice-cube makers 1950

Dishwashers 1955

Wall ovens 1955

Fold-back cooking units 1955

Built-in cooking units 1956

Meanwhile, our original product—the refrigerator—has been enlarged and improved little by little to such an extent that it has become almost a new appliance. The typical refrigerator sold in the early 1930s was a five-cubic-foot model, styled rather drearily, and depressingly bulky in relation to its actual refrigeration space. Refrigerators sold today have, as a rule, from ten to nineteen cubic feet of storage space. They are beautifully styled, require no defrosting, and have considerable freezer space. There is no question that the modern refrigerator is a much better buy than its early counterpart. I am indebted to a study by Professor M. L. Burstein of North-western University for some detailed data bearing on this point. He has calculated that "the real price of refrigeration services in 1955 was but 23 per cent of that in 1931." That comes pretty close to the essential meaning of progress.

Reference

1 - In 1937 Winton's name was changed to Cleveland Diesel Engine Division and in 1962 its operations were consolidated with those of the Electro-Motive Division. In 1937, too, we set up the Detroit Diesel Engine Division to produce smaller diesel engines for marine and industrial use. Though there has been some overlapping in their products over the years, it has been generally true that the Detroit Diesel Engine Division has specialized in smaller engines.