E. A. DEEDS
These photos were taken about the time the Delco firm was incorporated.
In industrial production, as in so many other activities, large oaks from little acorns grow. The cash register and the electric self-starter are instances in point. The first factory of The National Cash Register Company under the presidency of John H. Patterson, was a room in the Callahan Power Building, forty feet wide and eighty feet long, with thirteen people on the payroll. From it emerged a business on which the sun never sets.
More humble in environment was the invention of the self-starter which had its birth in a barn. Almost before a decade passed, it had made the use of the automobile universal. Such were the beginnings of two enterprises which, to a degree greater than any others, enhanced the industrial prestige and prosperity of Dayton. Each contributed a chapter to the romance of American Industry.
Dayton people, and for that matter, a considerable portion of the outside world, are familiar with the story of John H. Patterson’s industrial genius that made his name synonymous with cash register production and distribution. They are not so well acquainted with the origin of the self-starter and particularly the historic barn in which it was created. A replica of that barn stands today in Carillon Park.
The Drama of the Barn, as it may well be called, evolved about two men—Edward A. Deeds and Charles F. Kettering. Both were born and reared on the farm, that rugged nursery in which so many of our national leaders were nurtured; both worked their way through college; both began their careers near the bottom of the ladder at The National Cash Register Company. Their business alma mater served them well.
The hayloft of the Deeds barn was equipped as a workshop.
Fate must have decreed that Deeds and Kettering should meet. In 1904 Deeds was Superintendent at the NCR. Electrically minded since his boyhood on the farm, he had an unwavering confidence in the application of electricity to industry. At that time the cash register was operated by turning a crank. Deeds conceived the idea of putting a motor on the machines to supersede the crank. He designed and built the first motor to be employed for this use. This is an important link in the Deeds-Kettering story, because it brought the two men together.
Deeds was absorbed in many responsibilities at the NCR and could not devote the necessary time to the perfection of the motor. He wanted a bright young electrical engineer to whom the electrification project could be entrusted. He asked Alfred D. Cole, his old professor of physics at Denison University, to suggest a likely candidate. Cole, who had joined the faculty of Ohio State University, suggested Kettering, his star student, who was about to graduate. Deeds wrote to Kettering, offering him a position at $50 a week and the offer was accepted, not, however, without some qualms on Kettering’s part.