Charles Kettering
Charles Kettering
Charles Franklin Ketteringwas an American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 186 patents. He was a founder of Delco, and was head of research at General Motors from 1920 to 1947. Among his most widely used automotive developments were the electrical starting motor and leaded gasoline. In association with the DuPont Chemical Company, he was also responsible for the invention of Freon refrigerant for refrigeration and air conditioning systems. At DuPont he also was responsible for the development of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth29 August 1876
CityLoudonville, OH
CountryUnited States of America
The sure ways to create new ventures of discovery are to keep an open mind.
In many ways ideas are more important than people - they are much more permanent.
If I have had any success, it's due to luck, but I notice the harder I work, the luckier I get.
Research is industrial prospecting. The oil prospectors use every scientific means to find new paying wells. Oil is found by each one of a number of methods. My own group of men are prospecting in a different field, using every possible scientific means. We believe there are still things left to be discovered. We have only stumbled upon a few barrels of physical laws from the great pool of knowledge. Some day we are going to hit a gusher.
A research problem is not solved by apparatus; it is solved in a man's head.
Bankers regard research as most dangerous a thing that makes banking hazardous due to the rapid changes it brings about in industry.
I often say that research is a way of finding out what you are going to do when you can't keep on doing what you are doing now.
If I want to stop a research program I can always do it by getting a few experts to sit in on the subject, because they know right away that it was a fool thing to try in the first place.
I think that the greatest education in the world is the education which helps one to be able to do the right things at the time it has to be done.
We have reason not to be afraid of the machine, for there is always constructive change, the enemy of machines, making them change to fit new conditions.
You can send a message around the world in one-fifth of a second, yet it may take years for it to get from the outside of a man's head to the inside.
There has never been any 30-hour week for men who had anything to do.
One of the things we have to be thankful for is that we don't get as much government as we pay for.
I could do nothing without my problems; they toughen my mind. In fact, I tell my assistants not to bring me their successes for they weaken me, but rather to bring me their problems, for they strengthen me.