By Charles O. Adams
NOTE: Mentions of images are preserved for archival purposes. However, the orignal images are missing.


Here is a picture of John H. Patterson, Orville and Wilbur Wright,, Edward A. Deeds, Arthur E. Morgan, and Charles F Kettering. It is not possible to talk about just the four men in the title printed for my talk without including the other two. My early life was affected by all six, not just four.

John H. Patterson, Edward A. Deeds, and Charles F. Kettering, were all farm boys. All had the discipline of farm work. All had inventive talents. All had industrial bents.

My interest in Patterson was brought about mainly because of our family experience in the 1913 Dayton Flood, and Patterson’s help and relief work following the Flood. Patterson left the family farm to become a toll collector on the Miami-Erie Canal at the toll station where the canal crossed Third Street in downtown Dayton. That didn’t pay enough, so he started selling coal. He was losing money because of pilfering from the cash drawer. By chance, he heard of James Ritty’s invention of a cash register, being made by a firm in Dayton. He was laughed at when he bought that firm. He tried to sell it back. The man from whom he bought it refused to buy it back. Patterson then said he would make a “Go” of it.
This picture shows that he did just that!  He built the entire National Cash Register plant over a period of some years on the grounds that had been the Patterson farm, where he grew up.

He was a great thinker about major things. But he was often eccentric about other things. He loved horseback riding. His statue on horseback, overlooking Hills and Dales is very fitting. He insisted on all his executive being good horsemen. He would get them all out early to ride through Hills and Dales. One morning, while reviewing his executives, like the Kiser reviewing his troops, Charles Kettering’s horse balked and threw Kettering over the horse’s head, right in front of Patterson. It took Deeds’ intervention to save Kettering’s job.

Among Patterson’s many “Firsts” were:
1. Welfare for workers.
2. Factory Medical Care Clinics & Visiting Nurses.
3. Health education for employees.
4. The “House Organ” publication.
5. Use of motion pictures in industry.
6. He saw a woman employee heating coffee on a heating resister in the plant. He immediately set up dining rooms and noonday entertainment for employees.
7. Rest periods and rest rooms for women.
8. He pioneered industrial and community relations, like his 1913 flood relief work.
9. Night schools for executives.
10. Foremen incentives.
11. He made Salesmanship a historic “first”, making it a science to be studied, like law and engineering.
12. He built a “Schoolhouse” for training. This was used also for kids’ programs on Saturday mornings, many of which I went to. High School graduations were held there. Lois and I marched down the isles there to the music of its Esty organ. That organ is now in the Victoria Theater.

It was Patterson who conceived the idea of a “City Manager” form of city government. He pushed this through for Dayton after the 1913 Flood.

While riding his horse down Schantz Ave., he remembered seeing his salesmen sweating in classrooms before air conditioning. He visualized tents among the maple trees from which he had collected sugar water as a farm boy. Within 48 hours he had a tent city set up there, called Sugar Camp. Eventually, the tents were replaced with air conditioned cabins. I went past these many times when we lived on Waving Willow Drive, off West Schantz Ave. This Sugar Camp is now up for sale by NCR, as noted in this article from D.D.N. just last month.

My associations with Edward A. Deeds were due to several of my family situations. My Dad’s cousin, Lou Adams, and his wife, Mertle, were caretakers for Deeds’ farm. This was across Stroop Road from his home, just west of Southern Blvd. Lou and Mert lived in the farm house in the middle of the farm, about where the Moraine Country Club sits today. Lou had to ride horseback around the farm, morning and evening. To check that all was well,  Lou and Mert would have my two sisters and me stay with them for two weeks each summer. We wandered about on the farm, and swam in Deeds’ swimming pool. This is still there, today, at the southwest corner of Stroop and Southern Blvd. Deeds let Morgan use this pool for experiments developing Miami Conservancy District.

Dad arranged for Howard Rinehart, V.P. of Wright Airplane Co., to take my twin sister and me for a ride in the Wright OW-1 airplane, seen here. It was the first closed cabin airplane in Dayton. We were to take off from the west side yard of Deeds’ home. Lois and I were put in the plane, and Howard started the engine. As he started to roll across the grass, Lois got scared, opened the door, jumped out, and ran back to Dad. Howard told me to close the door, and we took off. We flew several times above and around Delco Dell. This was a group of summer cottages on the hill overlooking Deeds’ farm, at the southeast corner of Stroop and Southern Blvd. We then landed back on Deeds’ side yard. Delco executives used Delco Dell in the summer time. We kids enjoyed watching our parents dancing while my father played the fiddle.

Deeds graduated from Dennison University and took a job with Thresher Electric Co. in Dayton. In the First Baptist Church, Deeds became acquainted with Alfred Alabaugh, who worked at NCR. The man in charge of electrification of the NCR plant got ill and had to retire. Alabaugh told Robert Patterson, a nephew of John Patterson, that he knew a young electrical engineer who could take over the job. So Deeds came to work at NCR.

Deeds left NCR to build the Shredded Wheat factory at Niagara Falls. Our family went through that factory on a vacation trip. Deeds then returned to NCR. Deeds’ administrative and inventive talents took him to the top executive level in NCR. He didn’t like the hand crank operating feature of NCR machines. He thought it could be done by electric motor, but didn’t have time to work on this. He write to Professor Cole, at O.S.U., his old teacher at Dennison, and asked if he knew some one with inventive talent who could join the staff of inventors at NCR. Cole suggested Charles F. Kettering. Deeds hired Kettering. Kettering took over a desk and bench in Inventions 3 Department.

My family associations with Kettering were due to my Dad having first been cashier at Dayton Engineering Laboratories Co., or Delco, and then Kettering’s private secretary at General Motors Research Laboratory. As cashier at Delco on East First Street, Dad would walk over the canal bridge, walk downtown to Winters Bank. He carried the entire payroll in cash, in a cloth bag, and walked back to Delco. He then dispensed it to the employees.

After United Motors bought Delco and United Motors became General Motors, Kettering’s lab work was separated and became General Motors Research Laboratory in the former Wright Airplane Company building in Moraine City. Dad was now Kettering’s private secretary. He would take me, sometimes, with him on Saturday mornings, to see some of their experiments. Tom Midgley showed me the ethyl gasoline experiment he was working on for Kettering. He had an engine mounted on a large, concrete block. The gas line to the carburetor was fed by two lines, each with a petcock. Starting the engine with plain gasoline, the engine would almost knock itself off the block. Tom then switched petcocks, feeding leaded gasoline to the engine, and it quieted right down. They didn’t, at that time, recognize the pollution that had to be eliminated later on.

Kettering kept a baseball bat in his office. It looked like a Louisville Slugger. One morning he called me into his office. As I walked in, he pitched me the bat. I almost fell on my face. The bat was made of Balsa wood, very light. He said don’t always believe what you see without checking, or doing some research on it.

The early 1920s were so soon after WW-I that it was considered necessary that everyone knew how to handle a rifle. At the back end of the Research building was an indoor rifle range. Dad had a Winchester Model 25, 22 long target rifle with iron sights, given him by Kettering. Dad taught me how to shoot on that range. I learned well enough to earn two “C” letters on the University of Cincinnati Rifle Team, and was part of a winning ROTC team. At Ft. Sheridan, above Chicago, on active duty, I earned the “Expert Rifleman” badge. Later, in the Dayton Industrial League, I shot on the Delco Products team.

Our family had another tie to the original “Barn Gang”. Zerbe Bradford, the primary draftsman on the Barn Gang, and his wife were stranded in their attic in the 1913 Flood, close to where we lived on Rung St. They also moved later to Hudson Ave., across the street from us. Their son Bill was the same age as my younger sister, Winifred. They played together quite often. The Bradfords and our family were good friends and got together on occasion.

As you know, the original Deeds’ Barn is now at Kettering-Moraine Museum, at Stroop and South Dixie. I have given several artifacts to Melba Hunt for display there.

Deeds became V.P. and Asst. Gen.Mgr. of NCR. In the same way that Tom Sheetz had the idea of a Wright B Flyer Look-a-Like and suggested it to Chuck Dempsey, and Chuck “Did It”,  so Deeds suggested to Kettering they electrify the cash register, and Kettering “Did It”.

I was on Kettering’s boat, the Olive K, once when it was moored at the Detroit Yacht Club for the Gar Wood, Harmsworth Trophy races on the Detroit River. It was the race when an English woman driver’s boat flipped into the air, came down nose first, and went to the bottom of the river. As I watched the race, I also saw two autogyro aircraft circling over the Detroit River. An autogyro aircraft is something like a helicopter. The autogyro has four large blades mounted to and around a vertical shaft. Each blade is like a small aircraft wing. These are not powered, but rotate due to the forward motion of the craft powered by an engine and propeller like a regular airplane. If the forward motion should stop, the large blades act almost like a parachute, gently lowering the craft to the ground.


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