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| In 1999, Professor Richard Scharchburg, pictured below, personally selected the Harley Earl photo exhibition to be displayed at the university's Art Center commemorating the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Collection of Industrial History at Kettering University in Flint, Michigan. Richard P. Scharchburg, for whom the archives are named, was a nationally known automotive historian and director of the Kettering/GMI Alumni Foundation Collection of Industrial History. He was widely recognized for his articles and presentations on industrial and automotive history and was working to arrange the SAE acquisition when he died in June 2000. The Scharchburg Archives was originally set up in 1974 with the acquisition of the William C. Durant Collection. Professor Scharchburg emailed us the following "BURYING CORPORATE BONES" newspaper stories (notice highlights). The last article featured below at this section is one written by Professor Scharchburg.
Burying
Corporate Bones Why
the Big Three hide their company archives By Al Rothenberg Pioneer Henry Ford reportedly once said, "history is
bunk." General Motors apparently agrees. Chrysler Corp. has mixed
emotions. Even the rich Ford Motor Co. is somewhere between the peak and the
valley of its archival interests. GM maintains no public archives, where its glorious and in
some cases not-so-glorious past can be viewed. Chrysler welcomes questions about its archives with about as
much enthusiasm as it does a Federally-mandated safety recall of its vehicles. Ford, however, beefed up its historical records 45 years ago
to celebrate its golden anniversary, and then again in 1963 to observe the
centennial of Henry Ford’s birth. Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.
maintains a massive collection of Ford history, including Henry Ford’s
personal papers. Other corporate records are stowed at a site near Ford’s
Dearborn World Headquarters. GM 'unofficial' archive at Kettering U. An archive in Flint, Mich. housed by Kettering University
(previously GM Tech) stores the papers of many of GM’s former leaders. Among
them are GM founder William Crapo Durant, former president Harlow Curtice, the
philanthropic Charles Stewart Mott, another former president, E.M. (Pete) Estes,
and of course, Charles F. Kettering. The Flint archives operate under the cumbersome title of GM
Alumni Foundation Collection of Industrial History. Its director, Richard P. Scharchburg, bristles at
the notion that he manages the "unofficial GM archive." Though
its home is the former General Motors Institute of Technology, Scharchburg
comments, "This is not a dumping ground for archaic GM records. We add to
our collection on a highly selective basis. And we are not about to simply take
anything GM wants to get rid of." GM has never provided funds directly to the archive, but did
provide dollars for GMI itself, and the space GMI occupies. But have they given
any direct help toward foster continued efforts to build the collection? "They
have helped us by not doing anything to stop us," declares
Scharchburg. "And that’s a help." Currently, Scharchburg says would like to procure the papers
of former GM President Edward N. Cole. "I understand that what remains of
Mr. Cole’s papers are controlled by his widow, Mrs. Dollie Cole," he
asserts. "However, efforts to obtain them by myself and intermediates have
been unsuccessful." Mr. Cole’s son, David, a prominent auto industry
analyst and director of the University of Michigan’s Office for the Study of
Transportation, says his father never did care about a personal historical
record. No archive, no
litigation? Scharchburg and other archivists like Dr. Philip Mason of the
Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs in the Walter P. Reuther Library of
Detroit’s Wayne State University offer a possible defense for GM. "I
discern that their concern is over potential litigation involving GM,"
Scharchburg says. "To them, it made sense from a business point of view. It
made sense from a corporate point of view. But it was disappointing from an
historical point of view." "We have tried to collect papers from the automobile
manufacturers, but have been unsuccessful," Dr. Mason reports. "They
spend millions to enhance their public image, and are not going to jeopardize
that image by making records available when they don’t know the contents. So a
company has two choices in retaining records—either develop their own archives
as Ford did, or keep them in a warehouse for storage as inactive records. “Many of GM’s
records do have historical value, but there is no systematic policy of
preservation," adds Mason. " You can appreciate their sensitivity.
Many documents turned up on the ill-fated Chevrolet Corvair when they were found
in a rubbish pile by a person who tried to sell them to GM." UAW papers at Wayne State Dr. Mason believes the archives at Wayne State attract more
inquiries in a month than all the presidential libraries receive in a year.
"We have all of the UAW presidential papers including some two million
Walter P. Reuther records, from his childhood through his death in 1970. Most archives employ strict rules barring removal of any
papers, and require that those requesting records are legitimate researchers.
About 240 oral interviews with UAW people were taped in 1965. "Mr. Reuther
told me he would like to hear a few to check their accuracy," Dr. Mason
recalls. "I told him that the interviewees would have to approve, and then
they could be made available only for scholarly research. I told him his request
did not fit that category." Following that, Dr. Mason was worried about how the UAW chief
would react, given the library had sought $1.2 million to help construct its
building. "To his credit, the UAW supported us with $8 million," Dr.
Mason recalls. Though Henry Ford debunked history, his actions belied his
words. His voluminous collection was turned over to the Ford Museum in 1964. It
even included a congratulatory letter on the speed of the V-8 engine from the
notorious criminal, John Dillinger. The archives have survived two fires and six
moves. Ford Museum reports it receives about 6,000 inquiries a year from
researchers. The oral history section lists 300 interviews with people who knew
Henry Ford. Ford archive, mostly for Ford The corporate archives of the Ford Motor Co. primarily serve
as a centralized historical research center for Ford personnel. Also, the rules
for using the Ford industrial records are quite explicit. Ford’s manager of
Archive Services, Elizabeth W. Adkins, operates within a strict set of
guidelines. Records are categorized as either open, or closed. Open records are
made available to outside researchers, while closed records are only available
to Ford people, up to a certain time. Outside researchers must submit requests in writing,
explaining the purpose of their interest, and which records they wish to see.
The requests are reviewed not only by the archives manager, but by Ford’s
Public Affairs section, as well as the Office of General Counsel. Ford advises researchers to make the Ford Museum their
initial contact, which may be a good idea, because the restrictions there are
far less severe. Try Detroit Public Library Another major source of auto industry archive information is
the Detroit Public Library’s National Automotive History Collection, which
occupies half of the building’s fourth floor. Curator March Patrick calls it
the largest automotive collection in North America, and probably the world. "We get requests from information from the car
companies, media and research people from all over the world. But perhaps our
most consistent customer is the buy off the street looking for a shop
manual," reports Patrick. At Chrysler, as at Ford, many of the papers of the
company’s founder, Walter P. Chrysler are stored in a corporate archive.
"We will respond to media questions, but most of our work is for internal
corporate purposes, says archivist Barbara Fronczak. "We don’t encourage
questions from the media, scholars or the general public. Our fear is, we would
be eaten alive by the sheer volume of requests." Write to us, we'll write you In fact, for several years a telephone call to the archive
department was answered with a recording that suggested a the caller submit
questions and requests by letter, and to expect a response by mail. Although GM doesn’t care about establishing and maintaining
its own archive, Scharchburg reports the corporation’s legal people have used
the Kettering University archives in "promoting, protecting and defending
GM interests on at least three occasions." Scharchburg and Dr.
Mason concur that none of the Big Three automakers want to spend too much money
on archives. Part of triangle missing Mason notes that when it comes to documenting the activities
and history of the automotive industry, there are "three basic research
sources - labor, government and industry. The dilemma we face is that
researchers have access to only two parts of that triangle." He says researchers can generally get at labor and government
records, but they can’t see industry management side. What
results says Mason, "is a distortion of history." Burying Corporate Bones (Part II)
Secretly
saved records reveal GM's views in the '50s By Al Rothenberg General Motors Corp., which never cared about retaining
records for the public, constantly worried about its bigness, charges of
monopoly and even excessive personal use of telephones by GM employees. The world’s largest car and truck producer also fretted
that its past could some day haunt the company. So with the obvious blessing of
top executives, lawyers ordered the shredding of meeting minutes of its public
relations policy and planning committees. David Lewis, professor of business history at the University
of Michigan, was a staff aide at GM in the Fifties when he determined that the
GM records belonged to future historians. He housed the papers of the Forties
and Fifties in his own home garage before turning the files over to the Bentley
Historical Library on the Michigan campus. Fifty years ago, the policy committee was comprised of the
very top officers of the corporation. They took grave notice of newspaper
reports of the day, and their references to such things as "profits going
hog wild," "big profits pay higher wages", "Big profits mean
we are headed for a bust." In the records obtained by Lewis, the committee
commented that, "We see (these sentiments) not only in the left wing and
labor press, but even in our more conservative journals." GM geared to defend 'bigness' In 1949, when Charles E. Wilson ran GM, the committee
proposed to defend its "bigness image" by noting that "America is
big, that mass production is a necessity of a large enterprise, and that bigness
in itself does not equate with as much power as popularly supposed." In an
earlier document Wilson observed, "We have to be very careful what we do.
People inherently do not like anything big." Wilson, commenting on the public relations issues surrounding
GM’s size, wrote, "Twenty years ago (in the Twenties) we did not rate
public relations on a par with engineering, production or sales." At that
time he called for recognition of PR as an area equal in importance to the other
three categories, noting "We are now in a period where certain changes are
occurring, especially in the relationship of large-scale industry with the
people. It will not do to assume an ostrich approach." During the Fifties, numerous publications and critics began
urging the auto industry to produce an entry-level $1000 car. GM’s in-house
response was: "It is not recommended we answer the articles directly.
However, it is planned to use every opportunity to prove to writers that a $1000
car is not a practical possibility." In the years immediately after World War II, GM’s media
relations could hardly be considered first rate. Sessions to resolve the
complaints were held with the Detroit media, which included the wire services
and the bureaus for national publications. Press expected to accept decentralized PR GM’s PR policy committee conceded, "It is apparent
steps should be taken immediately to improve our system for handling press
requests. Actually, there is nothing wrong with our policies of providing
information to the press. However, some press people erroneously expect all
information to be available at one central office. Under our divisional
decentralization, that is neither possible or desirable." Other documents, dealing with the subject of employee
expenses, also make for interesting reading. "Expense reports will be
scrutinized carefully for months, with unreasonable spenders then being
identified and informed. Long distance telephone calls exceeding $25 a month
will result in an itemized account sent to a superior. After four months,
individuals who do not show an improvement will be asked to explain the
necessity of why they talked so long." In 1950, the committee agreed that Ford and Chrysler
attracted more assembly line visitors than GM, and expressed hope that the
opening of the GM Tech Center in Warren, Mich., would change the picture after
1956. GM's ego shows through On the topic of contributions, a $50,000 gift to the National
Association of Manufacturers was approved in 1947. Lamont DuPont, head of the
DuPont company, which operated the giant Delaware-based chemical company urged
GM to double the contribution. The request by DuPont, a major GM stockholder,
was turned down twice that year. GM was asked if it would sponsor the radio show of popular,
but not always accurate Broadway columnists Walter Winchell. GM declined. The following comments were made regarding the 1947
stockholder’s meeting. "GM stockholders have a warm appreciation of
management policies, though some like to ‘crab.’ The majority like and buy
our products, but there is room for improvement." According to information
contained in the document, only 62 percent of GM shareholders at that time owned
a GM vehicle. Given the highly self-serving nature of the documents, it can
be concluded that GM’s legal department worried about possible federal
anti-trust crackdowns, and wanted to make sure that reports like these were
destroyed. # # # (March 30, 1998) GM's ego shows through Big Three' headed toward extinction, but auto industry alive and well by David Goodman / Associated Press Writer DETROIT
(AP) -- The Big Three is a phase, and a concept, nearing extinction. Now
that Chrysler Corp. is merging with Germany's Daimler-Benz, there's not much
reason to talk of an American and a foreign auto industry. Some say it's about
time the American public caught up with that reality. "It is a global
industry, and for any one country to claim dominance or superiority is a pretty
anachronistic concept," said industrial historian Richard Scharchburg.
"Here is a clear statement that we are living in a world without
bounds," said Michael Marsden, a scholar on the role of the automobile in
American culture. From the 1920s through the 1950s, a trio of Michigan companies
dominated the global auto industry. General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and
Chrysler Corp. -- collectively known as the Big Three -- ruled the American
market and led the world. "It was the United States that took the car and made it
suitable for the great spaces, the wide-open road," said Scharchburg,
professor of industrial history at Kettering University in Flint, the town where
GM was born. But that picture has been out of date for some time, as Japanese
automakers grabbed a big share of the U.S. market and German producers
established a worldwide presence. "They haven't been the Big Three for some time,"
said Marsden, dean of arts and sciences at Northern Michigan University in
Marquette. More than 2 million Honda, Toyota, Nissan and other foreign nameplate
cars roll off U.S. assembly lines each year. Foreign manufacturers now support
1.3 million U.S. jobs with a total annual payroll of $50 billion. At the same
time, GM and Ford produce millions of cars in Europe and have big stakes in
companies such as Isuzu, Mazda and Saab. Now with the merger of Chrysler and a
German company, there no longer will be three major U.S.-based automakers. "It's not revolutionary, it's evolutionary, and it's the
direction the auto industry has been moving in since the '20s," Scharchburg
said. How far will that process go? Scharchburg admits he doesn't know. "It might narrow down to as many as five
mega-companies," he said. "I see one major producer in Europe, one
major producer in the United States and one major producer in the Far
East." #
# # Charles F. Kettering / Doing the right thing at the right time By Richard P. Scharchburg, Thompson Professor of Industrial History "The
Man..." Charles Franklin Kettering was born on a farm near
Loudenville, Ohio, August 29, 1876. After graduation from high school, he
accepted a teaching position in a one-room rural school. Although highly
successful as a teacher, his mind was set on going to college. In the summer of 1896, he entered the College of Wooster
(Ohio). As a result of long and intense hours of study, his eyesight
deteriorated to the point that he was forced to leave college and return to
teaching. In 1898, he entered the engineering school at Ohio State, but
again his poor eyesight forced him to drop out during his freshman year. For the
next two years he worked on a telephone line crew, and then once again entered
Ohio State, finally completing his electrical engineering degree in 1904. After graduation, Kettering took a job in the inventions
department at the National Cash Register Company (NCR) in Dayton, Ohio. There he
developed an electric motor for cash registers, the OK Charge Phone for
department stores and several other contributions to a revolution then taking
place in business machines. In 1909, Kettering and Edward A. Deeds, his associate at NCR,
formed their own industrial research laboratory, the Dayton Engineering
Laboratories Company (later known as DELCO). Within three years, they had
produced a new all-electric starting, ignition and lighting system for
automobiles. The system first appeared as standard equipment on the 1912
Cadillac and as its use spread, women could conveniently become drivers without
the assistance of a chauffeur. DELCO was eventually sold to General Motors and
became the foundation for the General Motors Research Corporation of which
Kettering became vice president in 1920. The list of innovations and inventions that are credited to
Charles F. (nicknamed "Boss") Kettering is impressive. His book of
patents contains more than 300 separate applications that range from a portable
lighting system for farms to coolants for refrigerators and air conditioners.
Other patents included a World War I "aerial torpedo," a device for
the treatment of venereal disease, and an incubator for premature infants. Duco
paint and Ethyl gasoline were also his ideas and he was instrumental in their
development. He had interest in the development of diesel engines, solar energy,
and was a pioneer in the application of magnetism to medical diagnostic
techniques. He and his wife, Olive, had one son, Eugene Williams
Kettering, who working with his father on diesel engine development and was
largely responsible for the adaption of the diesel engine to railroad use.
"Boss Ket" retired from General Motors Research in 1947 but served as
a consultant over the next decade. Following a series of strokes, he died on
November 24, 1958. His Interests in Education When approached to support an early concept of
"practical education" he observed "...that people learned not
only with their minds, but with their eyes and ears and hands." He was
expressing his unfaltering confidence in the superiority of an educational
concept derived from his own teaching experience as well as involvement with
several cooperative education institutions.
Kettering's relationship to GMI can best be described as that
of a godfather. It began with his first talk in Flint in 1916, ten years before
General Motors decided to take over the school. Walter Chrysler, chairman of the
Industrial Committee of the YMCA, invited Kettering to Flint to talk about his
views on practical education. On that occasion Kettering noted: "Modern psychology teaches that experience is not merely
the best teacher, but the only possible teacher.. There is no war between theory
and practice. The most valuable experience demands both, and the theory should
supplement the practice and not precede it... Briefly, the cooperative job is
the student's laboratory in which he learns the details of his profession." Inspired by Kettering's presentation, the Industrial
Committee of the YMCA arranged for factory workers to receive instruction
adapted for their work in the factories. Under the committee's supervision, the
resulting School of Automotive Trades offered a variety of classes over the next
three years. Out of these early efforts to combine learning with practical needs
came the formation of the Flint Institute of Technology in 1919 and the entrance
of General Motors Institute in 1926. Speaking at the General Motors Institute's
commencement in August, 1932, Kettering said. "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." In 1941 on a similar occasion, he observed, Thus Kettering reiterated his belief in the value of a
practical education, a blending of theoretical knowledge with experience and
common sense, to do the right thing at the right time. Boss Ket's interest in his godchild, GMI, continued
throughout his General Motors career, and throughout his life. The Kettering
Archives are appropriately located at GMI. Students and researchers are
constantly impressed and amazed at the range of Kettering's interests, as well
as the wisdom and common sense of his practical approach to engineering and
life. His numerous speeches and writings are replete with
references to GMI and on many occasions he was eagerly sought as commentator,
consultant, commencement speaker and alumni program guest. He never once failed
to extol the advantages of hands-on learning and the dedication of GMI to that
principle of education. Meanwhile, something had to be done about the Chevrolet car
and Sloan pinned his hopes on an idea brought to him by Charles F. Kettering.
Kettering had entered the business as the head of Delco (Dayton Engineering
Laboratories Company). Kettering and his people had developed the first
practical self-starter, the first modern automotive electrical system, and many
other inventions and improvements too numerous to list. At the time he came to
Sloan with his proposal for Chevrolet, Kettering was head of GM's corporate
research operations and the acknowledged engineering wizard at the company.
Sloan, who was a trained engineer himself, regarded Kettering as a genius
(which, considering his past achievements, he may have been) and almost
infallible (which, as events would demonstrate, he definitely was not). What Kettering proposed was a design for a radical new
air-cooled engine. It became known as the "copper-cooled" engine
because of its distinctive copper cooling fins. Sloan bought into the idea for
Chevrolet, and soon Oakland and Oldsmobile were pleading for their own versions
of the new wonder engine. Production was scheduled for Chevy for the 1922 model
year. The only slight defect with the copper-cooled engine was that it simply
didn't work very well. Knudsen was highly skeptical of it from the first, but,
since he was new to the company and since Kettering was reporting directly to
Sloan, Knudsen's reservations were initially given little weight. Kettering, for
his part, kept testing and refining the powerplant through one production delay
after another, but remained convinced that the idea was sound. (Shown above,
test cars at the GM research building in 1921.) On one road trip through the Kentucky hill country, Kettering
and another engineer got hopelessly lost — this should have been taken as a
portent, but they didn't see it that way at the time — and finally asked one
of the locals for directions: "Can you tell us how to get to Cincinnati?"
Kettering implored. "Well," the fellow drawled, "you go on up
here to the fork in the road, and there you turn...Let's see, there you
turn...Hang it all, mister! If I was goin' to Cincinnati I wouldn't start from
here!" Unwittingly, that hillbilly had uttered a metaphor for the whole
Copper-Cooled program. Knudsen was desperately trying to get Chevrolet moving
and it was becoming abundantly clear to him that you couldn't get there from
here — not so long as Chevrolet was saddled with Kettering's miserable
copper-cooled engine. Knudsen took the only tack he could see: He proceeded with
parallel development of a new Superior model Chevy that he hoped would advance
the division's fortunes while he prayed for the copper-cooled program to grind
to a halt of its own dead weight. Yet, Kettering's prestige within the corporation was such
that the Copper-Cooled Chevrolet actually did stagger into production in the
fall of 1923. Even the sales catalog sounded as if it was withholding judgment: "Chevrolet Motor Company announces an important
development in economical transportation, consisting of a motor embodying new
application of established principles governing the efficient control of motor
temperatures under all weather conditions...Chevrolet cars, equipped with these
new motors, are now being marketed in limited quantities...along with its
present successful line of New Superior Models." That must rank as the most half-hearted endorsement of a new
product by its own manufacturer ever to emanate from Detroit. The caution was
not misplaced for a storm of complaints soon arose from divisional sales people,
dealers, and unlucky customers alike. Finally, Knudsen went to see Sloan.
"This copper-cooled car isn't any good!" he insisted. "It isn't
strong enough, the rear axle isn't any good, and even if you get these things
worked out so they are good, the car will cost too much for Chevrolet to make!
We've got seven or eight million dollars tied up in it, but it is my decision to
abandon this car altogether and I'm putting that decision down on paper and
sending it to you." As
the scale of the catastrophe eventually became obvious, Sloan had little choice
but to reluctantly agree. Kettering, who believed to his dying day that the
copper-cooled engine was basically sound, blamed the manufacturing people, while
the manufacturing people blamed Kettering's design. Kettering was so shattered
by the fiasco that he handed-in his resignation. Only with great difficulty was
Sloan able to talk him out of it. Precise production figures for the Copper-Cooled Chevy are no
longer available, but as many as 3,000 may have been built. All but one or two
of these were returned to the factory, their engines scrapped, and then resold
as ordinary Superior models. In hundreds of cases GM had to buy the cars back
from individual owners. One crusty doctor in New England refused to sell — no
big corporation was going to tell him what to do — and his car now resides in
(of all places!) the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. As
it turned out, everyone involved survived the catastrophe in fine shape. Knudsen
went on to take Chevrolet to low-priced sales leadership before the end of the
decade. Sloan settled in for a stellar career at the top of GM that was to
extend for another thirty-five years. Kettering, too, was far from finished.
Even before the ruckus had died down he had scored another historic landmark
achievement in automotive engineering with the introduction by Cadillac of his
double-plane crankshaft, the development that gave the final refinement to the
V-type engine and made it the predominant configuration in the industry for
generations to come. (Shown above, Kettering in 1930 with a Cadillac V16
engine.) So, in the end, the Copper-Cooled Chevrolet turned out to be
one of those rare disasters that have no lasting consequences and are soon all
but forgotten. Still, it must rank as perhaps the greatest product fiasco in the
long history of General Motors. # # #
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