Part 2

The connection was made and the engine turned over. “Then,” as Deeds commented later on, “we knew that quantitatively it was practical.” It was a memorable hour, for in the gathering dusk was born the second of the barn products that put the cap-stone on motoring, and made it safe as well as useful. With the perfection of the electric self-starter, a woman, even a child, could get into a car knowing that by merely pressing a button, the machine would start. It meant farewell to arm- and back-breaking. Gone was the crank and gone, too, was the acetylene tank of compressed gas for the headlights. The electric lighting of automobiles came simultaneously with the self-starter.

Convinced from his tests of sample sets that the electric self-starter was practical, Leland announced that the new device would go on his 1912 car. It was now late in 1910. Time again was of the essence for work in the barn, and time was beginning to run out. As with ignition, trouble came. When the new Cadillac car arrived at the barn it was discovered that the engineers at Detroit had not left sufficient room for the self-starter. This meant new drawings and new designs. With this obstacle hurdled, disaster broke. While driving on a stretch of bad road between Dayton and Xenia, Kettering’s car slid into a ditch. The impact not only smashed the car but broke one of his ankles. The foot was put into a cast and Kettering was ordered to remain in bed for two weeks.

On the morning after the accident a telegram from Detroit brought the news that the only Cadillac car equipped with one of the electric self-starters had caught fire in Leland’s garage. The starter was badly damaged. Within twenty-four hours Kettering was under that car, his crutches on the ground alongside, and his cast-bound leg sticking out from beneath the chassis. He brought the bruised and blackened starter back to life and action.

Now developed a new source of anxiety. Battery manufacturers, cautious and skeptical, maintained that no electric storage battery could be produced that would meet the requirements imposed. Delco needed thousands of batteries. In their dilemma a new ally came to their aid. He was O. Lee Harrison, salesman for the Electric Storage and Battery Company of Philadelphia, one of the largest concerns of its kind in the country.

He worked out of the Cleveland branch and while at Steubenville, Ohio he received this wire from the manager:

“We have a letter from the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company signed by a man named Kettering who wants to buy 5,000 storage batteries. Go down and see what he looks like.”

Harrison went to the little Delco office in the United Brethren Building. Wearing an old golf cap, Kettering was seated in a swivel chair with his feet propped up on the top of a desk. To him Harrison said:

“I am looking for a man named Kettering who wants to buy 5,000 storage batteries. I don’t expect to sell him but I want to see what he looks like.”

The man at the desk dropped his feet to the floor and said:

“I am Kettering.”

Kettering took Harrison to the barn and showed him the self-starter. In its original form it had sprockets and wheels and looked like a McCormick binder. When Harrison said it reminded him of the farm, Kettering remarked that he, too, was a farm boy. From that moment the two men clicked. Harrison went to Philadelphia and urged the sale of 5,000 batteries. When the President of the company asked about Delco credit Harrison responded that they had no rating at all but that “they had something.”

The upshot was that Harrison had two batteries made to meet Delco needs. One was a twelve-cell weighing sixty-five pounds. When he showed it to Kettering he was told that it was too big. Harrison went back to Philadelphia and asked for lighter ones. By this time his employers were fed up with his enthusiasm for the self-starter and decided to wash their hands of the whole business. Then Harrison played his trump card. He told the head of his concern that if he did not fill the Delco order he would go over to its strongest competitor. This threat carried the day. With his own hands Harrison perfected a light battery that met Delco needs. Before long Harrison was devoting part of his time to Delco interests. Eventually he became a valued part of the organization.

The battery problem was now solved but another difficulty arose. The new and lighter batteries had to be installed and this required time. Meanwhile time was slipping. Leland telegraphed that he was going to Bermuda on a vacation. If the electric self-starter was to go on the 1912 Cadillac, he must test it himself before he sailed. Only three more days remained before the deadline.

When the completed self-starter seemed ready to be shipped to Detroit something went wrong. For two days and nights Kettering and the “Barn Gang” labored to find the source of the trouble. If the starter did not reach Detroit in forty-eight hours, all was lost. Still the trouble persisted. Finally, late in the afternoon, Kettering sent an S.O.S. to Chryst who was still at the NCR. When he arrived at the barn all he could see of human life was legs protruding from under Kettering’s car which was now the guinea pig. The gang was completely exhausted after the long ordeal of heat, toil, and trouble. “You fellows rest awhile,” said Chryst, “I will try to find out what is wrong.” Wearily Kettering and Anderson hauled themselves out from under the car and before Chryst could say another word fell fast asleep.

Chryst took out the starter mechanism and found that two wires were wrongly connected. In their utter exhaustion Kettering and Anderson had not discovered it. Chryst fixed the wires in short order. The self-starter, now complete, went to Leland by express that night. Once on the 1912 Cadillac, every expectation was realized.

The experimental shop in the barn—the setting of so many headaches—now gave way to a factory. Quarters were rented on the second floor of the Beaver Power Building at the corner of Fourth and St. Clair Streets. Delco was now a full-fledged and going concern. The advent of the self-starter however required money and machinery. Deeds and Kettering had little of either. With implicit faith in the enterprise, they mortgaged their homes and borrowed money on their life insurance to raise the wherewithal for equipment. In the same year that the self-starter went on the Cadillac, Delco engaged the entire new four-story Beaver Power Building then nearing completion. When Deeds signed the lease, Fred Beaver, owner of the building, said to him:

“You boys will never fill this building making self-starters.” To this Deeds replied: “Just watch us grow.” And grow they did. The second Delco order to O. Lee Harrison was for 15,000 storage batteries, the largest placed up to that time. An enterprise that began in a barn with scant assets save the faith, energy, and inventive genius of the founders, had created an industry whose name carried weight wherever automobiles were made.

Ultimately Delco became part of the vast and far-flung General Motors organization which progressively brought new industries and with them expanded employment to Dayton. The small acorn, planted in the barn, had sprouted to giant proportions.

The business arrangement with Leland developed into a strong and lasting friendship. Father and sons could have had no deeper regard for each other than the dean of motordom and the two young men who had made Delco possible. So satisfactory was the relationship between them that the contract for the ignition system was their first and last. Subsequent dealings involving many millions of dollars were arranged by telephone, telegraph, or orally.

This relationship had an interesting and, so far as the automobile industry is concerned, an historic sequel. Although the episode did not transpire in the barn it was a direct result of all that happened there. As such it is well worth relating.

As Delco grew in prestige and prosperity Deeds and Kettering purchased between them a tract of beautiful rolling country just outside Dayton. Each built a residence on his property. Deeds called his place Moraine Farm because all the hills around Dayton are terminal moraines. One of the first features he installed was a model dairy where the milking was done by electricity. Part of the dairy became the setting of an experiment that re-enforced motor car equipment. The Delco electric ignition, lighting, and starting system had been born in a barn. The Cadillac V-8 was perfected in a cow shed.

The first Delco system had been put on a four-cylinder car. In 1914 some of the large automobile manufacturers advertised that they would produce a six-cylinder car. Leland at once announced that Cadillac would never make a six-cylinder car and gave it wide publicity.

Deeds learned that Leland’s plan to meet the six-cylinder car competition was to put a two-speed rear axle on his four-cylinder car. Deeds, as you will recall, had installed a two-speed rear axle on his “Suburban Sixty” and found it wanting. He realized that with such an arrangement Leland would trail in the parade of high-powered cars. Deeds and Kettering viewed the situation with concern so they decided to do something about it. If Leland’s competitors were to have a six-cylinder car, why should he not have an eight-cylinder car? At that time an 8-cylinder car was undreamed of so far as American production was concerned. The idea was revolutionary, but Deeds and Kettering had always done the revolutionary. They now set about doing it again.

The first V-8 car seen in this country was a French De Dion which was exhibited at the New York Automobile Show. Deeds and Kettering purchased it and had it shipped out to Moraine Farm. They found it clumsy and unsuitable for study or adaptation. If Leland had ever seen it he would never have fallen in with the suggestion for a Cadillac V-8.

Deeds cast about for a suitable experimental engine. He knew that E. J. Hall of the Hall-Scott Motor Company in California—the same Hall who was destined to have such an important part in the designing of the Liberty engine—had built an eight-cylinder aeroplane engine and installed it in a chassis. Perhaps this might serve the purpose. Deeds wired Hall to send it by express. “Do you mean express?” wired Hall in reply. “Yes,” answered Deeds.

The engine and chassis were shipped to Cincinnati where Kettering and Chryst, who was now a part of the Delco organization, picked it up. They drove it to Dayton, arriving in the early hours of the morning wet, cold, and mud-splattered. The engine was put on a Stevens-Duryea car owned by Kettering. It was christened “Old Steve” and became a guinea pig to rank in motor car history with “Suburban Sixty.”

Detroit is a rumor factory. If the work had been carried on there, the whole city would have known about it. It was therefore necessary to carry out the experiments in Dayton and in secrecy. Deeds turned the cows out of his barn and used it as a machine shop. All the machinery was installed at night and most of the work was done while Dayton slept. The secret was well kept. Deeds and Kettering improved the Hall engine and then took “Old Steve” to Toledo, where Leland gave it a drastic tryout. It stood up under every test, proving that the V-8 principle was right.

Leland now entered enthusiastically into preparations for his Cadillac V-8. Secrecy was still necessary. He therefore rented a shop in Worcester, Massachusetts, and brought over D. McCall White who had built the British Napier Eight to design the car. White did his work well. In 1914 the Cadillac V-8 was launched with proper eclat, enhancing the prestige of American-made automobiles.

If Deeds and Kettering had not carried out their experiments in the cow barn at Moraine Farm, the Cadillac V-8 might never have come into existence. Certainly it would have been long delayed. It was a labor of love on the part of Deeds and Kettering in gratitude for what Leland had done for them when Delco was little more than an inspiration. They never accepted a cent of compensation.

The Delco achievement stands as a thing apart in the development of American productive enterprise. It created a new industry, revolutionized the use of the automobile, and launched Deeds and Kettering on the road to wider and equally constructive fields. One became an outstanding industrial leader and builder; the other rose to be the greatest industrial scientist of his time.

The Liberty Engine

The Liberty Engine, one of the outstanding achievements of World War I, represents an engineering and manufacturing triumph that contributed much to man’s mastery of the air.

Conceived in less than six weeks during a time of crisis, it was the finest aircraft power plant of its time, and for a decade thereafter remained the nucleus around which aerial advances were made.

The story of the Liberty engine begins in 1917, shortly after the United States entered World War I. Air power, even then, had become a vital factor in military operations, and the hard-pressed Allies desperately needed a quantity-produced aircraft engine that would wrest control of the skies from the Central Powers. They turned to the United States and its industrial might for a solution to this critical problem.

How productive this appeal was to be was borne out in the events that followed. At the direction of Colonel Deeds, who was then serving as Chief of Aircraft Procurement, two automotive engineers literally locked themselves in a Washington hotel room and went to work. The date was May 29, 1917.

Colonel Deeds’ instructions had been brief but to the point. He cautioned the engineers, J. G. Vincent and E. J. Hall, that the engine they designed had to be light in weight in proportion to power, and adaptable to mass production. Then he added a final admonition: the engine must embody no device that had not already been tested and proved in existing engines. There was no time for experimentation.

Within forty-eight hours Vincent and Hall had come up with the rough design of the engine. Three days later they had incorporated in the design all of its major features, and shortly thereafter the nation’s auto manufacturers had started production of parts for five 8-cylinder engines and five 12-cylinder engines.

Deeds had been shooting for completion of the first trial engine by July 4. This goal, which seemed to many the strongest form of wishful thinking, was more than met in what will remain as one of the classic achievements in American production annals. Impossible as it had seemed, a complete 8-cylinder engine was delivered to the nation’s Capital on July 3, a day before the deadline and less than six weeks after the design was drawn. The first 12-cylinder engine passed its tests the following month.

In the short span of a year from the date when its designers first met, 1,100 Liberty engines had been produced and put into service. By the time the Armistice was signed, 24,475 engines had been turned out and daily production of the V-12 had climbed to the staggering figure of 150 every 24 hours. The magnitude of this engineering, manufacturing and management feat is pointed up by the fact that a host of small jigs, tools and fixtures were required to build every part of the complicated engine.

Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War, said of the project: “I regard the invention and rapid development of this engine as one of the really big accomplishments of the United States since its entry into the war.... The story of the production of this engine is a remarkable one. Probably the war has produced no greater achievement.”

Although the Liberty engine became a potent factor in World War I, its greatest achievements were to come in the years following, when for the first time aviation’s horizon was lifted above the level of county-fair stunt exhibitions and the foundation laid for commercial aviation.

It was the Liberty engine that first enabled man to conquer the ocean in an airplane. Four of the 440-horsepower engines powered the famous U. S. Navy NC-4, which in 1919 became the first plane to fly the Atlantic.

Two years later, when General “Billy” Mitchell conducted his historic and dramatic demonstration of the potency of air power, Liberty-powered planes were called upon to do the job. The big bombers, as Mitchell had predicted, sank a 22,000-ton German battleship in only twenty-five minutes.

In April, 1923, the Liberty was again in the headlines. Two Army pilots, Lieutenants Oakley Kelly and John Macready, flying a Fokker airplane powered with a Liberty engine, stayed aloft for thirty-six consecutive hours, shattering all previous endurance marks. Later the same year they completed the first non-stop transcontinental flight, again using the Liberty-powered Fokker.

The following year still another achievement was added to the Liberty’s long series of successes. Two Douglas Cruisers, powered with Liberty engines and prepared for the flight at Dayton’s old McCook Field, became the first planes to circle the globe, covering 26,345 miles in 363 hours of actual flying time.

Besides holding at one time the world’s speed and altitude records, the Liberty also was the engine that first made the concept of air-mail service more than just a dream. Charles A. Lindbergh was among the pioneer pilots of the early 1920’s who flew Liberty-powered De Haviland mail planes along relatively uncharted air lanes through all types of weather.

Thus, the war-born Liberty became the cornerstone of American commercial aviation and the forerunner of today’s vast and complex network of aerial transit. Years ahead of its time, the Liberty engine stands today as an outstanding example of American productive genius. Born in time of war, it played an important role in time of peace. In aviation’s hall of fame, the Liberty engine is assured a place of honor for decades to come.

The “Lotosland”

The “Lotosland” was for a number of years the second home of Colonel and Mrs. Deeds. It was a trim vessel of 206 feet, built to Colonel Deeds’ specifications. While it was never used for long ocean voyages, it was fully capable of making them. The “Lotosland” included many innovations, one of the most important of which was the amphibian airplane which it carried. She was the first ship, other than a naval vessel, to be so equipped. When the United States entered World War II, the Navy requisitioned the “Lotosland” and converted her into a combat ship for anti-submarine patrol. She made a distinguished war record and accounted for at least one submarine. After the war the “Lotosland” was disposed of to private shipping interests and, at last reports, was plying between Miami, Florida, and South America.

The “Cincinnati”

The “Cincinnati,” prototype of the replica in miniature on display in Deeds Barn, was typical of the locomotives that in the 1850’s were beginning to establish a new transportation network across Ohio and the Middle West.

These locomotives and their successors were to doom the canal system which played such an important role in development of the West. Although the Miami and Erie Canal—which linked Dayton to Cincinnati and Toledo—had its peak year in 1851 when the “Cincinnati” first steamed into Dayton, canal operating expenses outran revenue only five years later. In 1877, official operation of the canal ended. In the march of progress, the railroad had won.

The “Cincinnati” was built by the Harkness firm of Cincinnati, and was one of the most advanced locomotives of its day. Its honest functionalism, as evidenced by the businesslike cow-catcher and the monstrous stack designed to trap dangerous wood sparks, makes this type of locomotive, called an “American,” a favorite with railroad fans.

How long the “Cincinnati” remained in service with the C.H.H.&H.D. Railroad, and its ultimate fate are not known, but the colorful locomotive and others of its kind made possible significant gains in man’s never-ending quest for better transportation.

The Cash Register Display

Inasmuch as C. F. Kettering and E. A. Deeds began their careers with The National Cash Register Company, it seemed fitting that some representation of that company’s products should be included in the barn display. The display includes early models of National cash registers and an impressive exhibit of the 20,000 parts which go to make up a modern National accounting machine.

The cycle of events moves in unpredictable and often unexpected ways. When E. A. Deeds left NCR to help develop the self-starter business, he probably never expected to be a part of that organization again. Yet in 1931 he was named Chairman of the Board of that company and subsequently played an important part in its very considerable development.