Kettering Health Network - Who Is Charles F. Kettering?

Our namesake Charles F. Kettering, left us this legacy... he looked at the world around him and asked, "How can I make it better?" He answered his own question with amazing inventions such as the incubator for premature infants, the V-8 engine and high octane, anti-knock gasoline, the automobile self-starter, the storage battery electrical system, refrigeration and air conditioning, the pilotless biplane, synthetic aviation fuel, retractable aircraft landing gear, a practical diesel engine, and research in fields such as magnetism which eventually led to imaging devices we use every day in the healthcare field to diagnose illnesses. The list of inventions goes on and on, second in number in Kettering's lifetime only to Thomas Edison.

Charles F. Kettering's legacy of innovation that we keep alive in the Kettering Health Network is reflected in one of his most quoted statements: "Nothing ever rose to touch the skies unless someone dreamed that it should, someone believed that it could, and someone willed that it must."

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Air Cooled Engine
Auto Pilot Control
Auto Theft Prevention System
Electric cash register
Electric auto ignition and self-starter for automobiles first appeared on the 1912 Cadillac. Within a few years, Delco produced a complete starting, ignition and lighting system that is credited with the phenomenal rise of the automobile industry.
Spark plug
Quick Drying Lacquer Finish for CarsUnit Injector for Diesel Engines and other improvements that made it possible to produce these engines in a size practical for locomotives and trucks, etc. This revolutionized the powering of railroads.
Freon for refrigerators and air conditioners. Ridgeleigh Terrace, Kettering's residence in Dayton, was the first air conditioned home in America.
Leaded "Ethyl" Gasoline
Quick Drying Lacquer Finish for Cars
Auto safety glass
Portable electric generator
Four-wheel brakes
Automatically Controlled Transmission for Motor Vehicles
Electric railway gate
First synthetic aviation fuel
Two Cycle Engine
Store Service Credit System Apparatus
Adding and Subtracting Machine
Fuel Supply System
Extraction of Bromine from Sea Water
Retractable Landing Gear
Incubator for Premature Infants
Rocket V-8 Engine (high compression automobile engine)
First Pilotless Aircraft
Durex bearings
Quick-process malleable iron
Harmonic balancers
Static and dynamic balancing machines
Crankcase ventilation
Two-filament headlamps
Special winter lubricants
Extraction of bromine from sea water
Engine oil coolers
Two-way shock absorbers
Chromium plating
Inlox rubber bushings for spring shackles
Fixed-focus headlamps
Extreme-pressure lubricants
Resonance-type intake and exhaust silencers
Double glass windows
Unit injector for Diesel engines
Variable-speed transmissions
Engine carbon removers
Heat-resisting valve steel
Copper-lead bearings
Pearlitic malleable iron camshafts
Permanent-mold centrifugally-cast brake drums
Tellurium-treated malleable iron
Wear-resistant cylinder iron
Molybdenum-manganese-silicon steel
Powdered iron metallurgy
Grooved and tinned plated piston rings
Silver bearings

The whole fun of living is trying to make something better.
A problem thoroughly understood is always fairly simple.
Found your opinions on facts, not prejudices.
We know too many things that are not true.
The key to economic prosperity is the organized creation of dissatisfaction.
A man must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere with progressive things.
An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.
High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.
If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.
It doesn't matter if you try and try and try again, and fail. It does matter if you try and fail, and fail to try again.
It's amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions.
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
Nothing ever built arose to touch the skies unless some man dreamed that it should, some man believed that it could, and some man willed that it must.
People are very open-minded about new things - as long as they're exactly like the old ones.
The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that there are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer.
The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.
There will always be a frontier where there is an open mind and a willing hand.
A problem well stated is a problem half solved.
You can't have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.