When Kettering took over his job in the Inventions Division at the NCR it was to mean more than a brilliant contribution to the development of the National cash register. It marked the beginning of a kinship with Deeds that was to make inventive history. The reason for this kinship did not rest solely on the fact that they were both electrically minded. Also important was the fact that they embodied certain opposites of talent and temperament which so often make for success.
In 1904, when Deeds and Kettering met, the gasoline-propelled vehicle, despite jests, jokes and jeers, was becoming a practical reality. Great inventors like Thomas A. Edison and Charles P. Steinmetz, however, insisted that it was doomed to failure, contending that electricity was the one and only effective motive force for the horseless carriage. Deeds believed otherwise. He saw the internal combustion engine as the driving power of the future. He had been so impressed with the gasoline automobile that for a time he had an ambition to go into its production. Unable to do this, he decided to “put something”, as he expressed it, on motor cars. This ambition pointed the way to what became the electric ignition, lighting, and starting system.
In order to put that “something” on a car it was necessary to have a car. Here is where the famous barn first entered the picture. Deeds lived at 319 Central Avenue in Dayton. Back of the house was a barn which housed a horse and phaeton. Deeds could easily have purchased an automobile had he wished. A purchased car, however, would not serve the purpose that clamored for action. That “something” could only be placed on an automobile that he literally knew from the ground up. With the aid of Fred Schmitt, an expert machinist, he built and assembled a car which was named “Suburban Sixty.” All the work on it was done in the barn. Deeds put a two-speed axle on the barn product but found that it did not function satisfactorily. He therefore substituted an auxiliary transmission which did work.
The “Suburban Sixty,” built by E. A. Deeds, with the summer and winter bodies which made it an all-weather model.
Deeds now had a car and the germ of an idea. Once more, absorption in responsibilities at the NCR prevented him from devoting sufficient time to the development of the idea. As he pondered over what to do, he recalled an experience that he had while building the Shredded Wheat plant at Niagara Falls. In order to obtain some equipment for a miniature electric railway which was to be installed in the factory restaurant, he was obliged to deal with two men who operated a small manufacturing firm in Providence. These men sat in an unpretentious office with a desk between them and operated on a fifty-fifty basis. One ran the factory; the other looked after business details.
This crude drawing was the basis of the original patent issued to C. F. Kettering.
