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As soon as Inventor Kettering graduated from Ohio State University in 1904 he threw his diploma away lest it make him think his education finished. He went to Dayton where a job in National Cash Register was awaiting him. He was told to make an electric cash register and did. His manners annoyed the late John Henry Patterson who fired him on sight time & again. The engineering department repeatedly rehired him. For while Inventor Kettering has come by a fortune in his own right he is the antithesis of the successful businessman. He may go to a formal dinner in a sports jacket and not even be aware of it. He has boarded trains without a ticket or a cent.
In a big room across the hall from his linoleum-floored office is an old, flimsy Wright airplane of early vintage. For Inventor Kettering was interested in airplanes as well as motorcars. He learned to fly in 1912. When he gave up in the early 1920's because he had "too much insurance to fly." he had accumulated more flying hours than any other private pilot.
Ever since Mr. Kettering moved into his present home he has delighted in filling it with gadgets to make life easier: buttons to open and close windows, eleven Frig-idaires, a cooling system. This became his pet hobby. Had it no Charles Franklin Kettering, GM would probably not be entering the air conditioning field now. He feels many of the developments in the temperate zone have been due to temperature-control in winter and is excited at the thought of what temperature-control in summer may bring about.
Off-hours, Mr. Kettering leads a private life that remains private. But the same credo of change fills these hours: life, like motorcars, to Mr. Kettering, must be reduced to more efficient terms. He & wife & son have gone touring in the great omnibus he made from an old Yellow Coach, fitted with all the conveniences of home and some not installed in many homes. His yacht, the Olive K., is filled with strange electric contraptions. Inventor Kettering also developed a way of synchronizing its twin screws so that it is vibrationless. Its cruises have taken him and his close friends on exploring parties in Yucatan and the South Seas and in winter the Olive K. is often off Miami where Mr. Kettering is a member of the famed "Committee of 100" for winter residents.
Feeling that nobody can look far ahead, Inventor Kettering maintains that research "is a method of finding out what people will be wanting when they are through wanting what they are wanting now." He feels there is still too much of the horseless carriage about automobiles but would blame it on the public's demands rather than on any engineering deficiency. He visions "a great express highway traversing the continent and carrying an almost fabulous stream of traffic, travelling well over a mile a minute." the cars of that not too distant future looking "no more like our cars of today than our latest models resemble those of 1900."