Chapter 14
General Motors is an engineering organization. Our operation is to cut metal and in so doing to add value to it. About 19,000 engineers and scientists work in the corporation, of whom 17,000 are in the divisions and 2000 in the general technical staffs. Many of our leading executives, myself among them, have an engineering background. It is natural, therefore, that we should always have understood that our progress is linked to technological progress, and that our effort to achieve it is necessarily never ending. I expressed a policy on this subject at the time I set up the General Technical Committee in 1923: research and engineering in General Motors were to be on the same organizational plane as operations.
The permanent drive of research and engineering in industry is to accelerate technological progress, to incorporate in products and in manufacturing the advances made in science and technology, and to shorten the time between development and production. To achieve these ends we long ago differentiated a staff function from the operation function. We gathered together a research staff in the early 1920s and an engineering staff about ten years later. Today we have in General Motors, outside of operations, four technical staffs: the Research Laboratories, Engineering, Manufacturing, and Styling. (Note 14-1.) They are grouped in physical proximity to each other in a modern university atmosphere at the $i25-million General Motors Technical Center near Detroit.
There are logical reasons for grouping these staffs geographically. Certain similarities exist among them in the creative nature of their work and its broader scientific and technical aspects, and there are overlapping areas of interest and activity which require co-ordination.
Research
The present approach to research in General Motors is the result of evolution. Research of one kind or another in the corporation goes back almost fifty years. A laboratory was organized for General Motors by Arthur D. Little, Inc., in 1911 to conduct, mainly, materials analysis and testing. The main stream of General Motors' research, however, comes down from the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, organized independently by Charles F. Kettering (with E. A. Deeds) in 1909—before he came to General Motors—for the purpose of working on developments in the automotive field.
Mr. Kettering was, of course, the outstanding individual in the evolution of General Motors' research. For many years, paralleling my own, he was head of this technical activity in the corporation. In 1912, before he was associated with General Motors, he made automobile history when he brought out the first practical electric self-starter. One of his companies, the Dayton Engineering Laboratories, bought components for the starter and began assembly operations, and so became a successful manufacturer as well as a research laboratory. Three years later there were eighteen companies offering electric starting equipment. The first letters of the name of Mr. Kettering's company were taken to form the now famous trademark Delco. When Delco was brought into the United Motors Corporation in 1916, along with my company, Hyatt, I came to know Mr. Kettering intimately.
Mr. Kettering, an engineer and a world-famous inventor, a social philosopher, and a super-salesman I might say as well, gave a great deal of time and effort to conducting research in various fields that captured his interest and imagination. Before he came into General Motors in 1919, his laboratory had begun its great work on combustion. His organization was purchased by General Motors and combined with other research activities to become, in 1920, the General Motors Research Corporation at Moraine, Ohio, with Mr. Kettering as president. In 1925 we moved the Research Corporation to Detroit, and brought all General Motors' general research activities together under Mr. Kettering. Mr. Kettering retired in 1947 and was succeeded by Charles L. McCuen, an outstanding engineer who came up through the Oldsmobile organization. Mr. McCuen followed an advanced engineering approach, and produced very good results in a number of important areas in General Motors until he retired in the 1950s.
In 1955 a new phase in General Motors' research was begun with the appointment of the eminent nuclear scientist Lawrence R. Hafstad as vice president of research. Dr. Hafstad's training, of course, was not as an automotive engineer; he had never been associated with an automobile company. His appointment reflected the fact that the emphasis in the work of the Research Laboratories was moving steadily in the direction of investigation of new, broad research problems.
The activity of the Research Laboratories today lies mainly in three kinds of work. First, it does trouble-shooting around the corporation and it may be called in to help wherever its specialized knowledge is needed, for example, in the elimination of gear noise, in the testing of castings for material defects, or in the reduction of vibration. Second, it makes engineering improvements of a creative nature, growing out of problem-solving. These problems range from improvements in transmission fluids, paints, bearings, fuels, and the like, to high-level applied research, such as the work on combustion, high-compression engines, refrigerants, diesel engines, gas turbines, free-piston engines, aluminum engines, metals and alloy steels, air pollution, and the like. And third, it encourages some intensified basic research.
The dramatic accomplishments of science in recent years have captured the imagination of everyone, and have caused industry as a whole to move into a "research era." The word "research" is used in industry in a number of different ways: to denote scientific discovery, or advanced engineering, or even traditional and routine product improvements, the last being clearly an abuse of the term. Research has always been difficult to define in a way that distinguishes the more basic or fundamental type from applied research. There is no commonly agreed hard-and-fast line as to how "basic" a thing has to be, objectively, to be called "basic research." The definition upon which there seems to be wide agreement is that basic research is the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. In this sense, we in this country are not doing nearly enough.
The solution to this problem lies mainly in the universities and in government activity, but in recent years the question has arisen of the role of private industry. Obviously the major portion of the work must be undertaken in the universities. They have the academic viewpoint, the purpose, the tradition, the atmosphere, and the talent for seeking knowledge for its own sake. My personal viewpoint is expressed in the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which supports a program of basic research in the physical sciences in the universities. That this research is basic is indicated by the fact that the foundation bets not on the project but on the talent of the individual, who selects his own research in accordance with his individual interests, desires, and ability.
Obviously, too, basic research that requires unique and expensive facilities beyond the resources of universities is properly the province of government establishments such as the Bureau of Standards and the more recent Atomic Energy Commission and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
As to the participation of industry in basic research, the question has two parts: research inside the industrial organization and that done outside the organization but financed by it. I think, first of all, that since the outcome of basic research is the foundation of the knowledge used in industry, it is appropriate and an expression of enlightened self-interest for industry to make outside grants to universities for basic research. In other words, industry should do this because in the long run it will help industry. I think that shareholders and management will agree in principle with my position on this.
The extent to which industry should engage in basic research inside its own borders is a complex and somewhat unsettled problem. I cannot see how industry in its own work can properly distract its attention, in a large way, from its own practical projects. From the standpoint that basic research is the seeking of knowledge for its own sake, it is apparent that it does not belong, in a primary sense, in industry.
It does not follow, however, that industry should not engage at all in basic research. To a certain extent I think it should. A compromise is necessary. The scientists seek knowledge primarily for its own sake; industry seeks knowledge for eventual application. It is, however, reasonable for industry to engage in basic research in specified areas where any advance in knowledge, however speculative, is likely to be of eventual use to the industry: a kind of scientific reconnaissance. In other words, industry might legitimately employ scientists to work on basic research within the industry in areas where the scientists' fields of interest coincide with those of the industry, even though the motivations of each are different.
For example, a scientist might say: "My chief interest is the relation of the properties of individual metals to the properties of alloys. I don't care of what use this is. I want to know why it is." A producer of alloys could hardly help but be interested in the results of the research. So long as the motives of the scientist and the industry are not prejudiced, it is reasonable for them to establish a working relationship. The compromise lies not in motivation, but in the overlapping objective fields of interest. The scientist's "basic research" may be the industry's "exploratory research." This is the kind of basic research I think industry is justified in engaging in, since there is a reasonable expectation of an application regardless of the scientist's disinterested motive. To avoid any possible limitation on research activities, we need side by side both the industrial and the academic approaches.
In sum, therefore, my argument is this: that basic research, defined as the search for knowledge for its own sake, belongs primarily in the universities; that industry should give support to basic research in universities; and that industry has a special interest in engaging in several types of basic research inside of industry where there is a common broad area of subject matter. Useful results come more quickly from basic research than heretofore and so a basic research group inside industry becomes a valuable intelligence group in the physical sciences. And the presence of scientists, well known for their work in basic science, helps morale and the prestige of the industrial laboratory and of the enterprise itself.
The Engineering Staff
The Engineering Staff provides an intermediate, medium-range link between the Research Laboratories and divisional engineering activities. It chiefly develops new engineering concepts and designs, and appraises them for commercial application.
We did not have a department or section of the corporation under the title "Engineering Staff" until 1931. But the various persons and functions that were brought together to make up this staff already existed. Some of them went back to the early twenties. When, for example, Mr. Hunt and Mr. Crane worked up the new Pontiac car in the Chevrolet Division in 1924 and 1925, that was a species of improvised staff operation for a special purpose. The General Technical Committee, formed in 1923, was another step toward an engineering-staff concept. Our divisions then differed greatly in their engineering practices, and in the quality of their engineering work. Some of our products were well designed; others were not. I have described the lack then of any extensive interchange of information among the divisions, or any means which insured that this would take place, and how the General Technical Committee, uniting research, divisional engineers, and general executives, was made to serve this purpose. The General Technical Committee, growing as it did out of our experience with the copper-cooled engine, was the beginning of all engineering co-ordination in General Motors. From this committee came the corporation's first regular testing program. Cars then were being tested on public roads, and there was no easy way of telling whether the test driver had pulled up at the side of a road, taken a nap, and then driven faster than the test schedule called for to make up the necessary mileage. Once one of our engineers discovered a test car jacked up outside a dance hall with the engine running up the required mileage on the odometer.
The most important step we took to standardize and improve test procedures was the establishment in 1924 of the General Motors Proving Ground, the first of its kind in the automobile industry. The thought was that we would have a large area, properly protected, and entirely closed to the public. It would be provided with roads of various types representing all the various demands on the motorcar from the standpoints of high speed, hills of various grades, smooth roads, rough roads, ability of a car to move through water—which is frequently required in severe storms—and the like. There we would be able to prove out our cars under controlled conditions both before and after production, and we could also make comprehensive tests on competitive cars.
The idea was approved and the necessary capital made available. The next problem was to find out where such a proving ground could be located. What we wanted was a varied terrain centrally situated with relation to our manufacturing operations in Lansing, Flint, Pontiac, and Detroit. Michigan is rather flat, and at first we had difficulty locating an area of sufficient size that would give us all the various grades we needed. However, almost every foot of the United States has been measured topographically, and the record was available in Washington. We went to Washington and from the Geological Survey maps available there we determined a location that appeared to fulfill our needs. Then the general executives and engineers of the various divisions and myself spent a day at the prospective site. We walked all over the place, ate a picnic lunch under the trees, and finally came to the conclusion that that particular area of 1125 acres—now 4010 acres—at Milford, Michigan, would meet the requirements we had in mind.
I delegated one of my executive assistants, W. J. Davidson, to take responsibility for developing the Proving Ground, and he appointed F. M. Holden as the first resident manager. Not long afterward Mr. Holden went to Oakland at his own request and was succeeded at the Proving Ground by O. T. ("Pop") Kreusser. All three of these men contributed greatly to the success of this project.
The land was surveyed; the straightaways were laid out so that we could check the effects of different winds on speed; a track was built and banked so that it was reasonably safe to operate cars at speeds up to 100 miles an hour or more. Engineering buildings were erected, so that indoor tests could be made in correlation with outdoor tests. Headquarters and facilities were provided for the corporation's engineers. Separate engineering headquarters and garage facilities were eventually provided for the staffs of the engineering departments of the various divisions, so that they could preserve their divisional autonomy in testing. Chevrolet, for example, could do its own testing if desired, in addition to that being done by the corporation. A clubhouse was erected that provided sleeping quarters, dining facilities, and the like for those attached to the Proving Ground operations, since the Proving Ground itself was a considerable number of miles from any town where commissary facilities were available.
In those days I used to spend a day and a night, sometimes longer, at the Proving Ground every other week. I would go over the engineering of General Motors' cars and competitive cars. I would examine what was being done in the way of testing future products. The Proving Ground thus afforded my associates and myself a wonderful opportunity to find out what was going on in the automobile industry from the engineering point of view. To the original Proving Ground we have since added a special, desert proving ground at Mesa, Arizona, and a station to test cars in mountain driving and a garage and shop facility to service our test cars at Manitou Springs (Pike's Peak), Colorado.
The General Technical Committee, it will be recalled, acted in the 1920s as a kind of board of directors for the Proving Ground as a part of its work in co-ordinating and standardizing engineering procedures throughout the corporation. It also administered certain other central staff activities, such as the Patent Section, the New Devices Section, which evaluated technical devices submitted to the corporation by outside persons, and a foreign engineering liaison section.
But the General Technical Committee had no engineering staff of its own. Advanced engineering of corporation-wide interest was conducted in the 1920s either by the Research Laboratories or by the engineering departments in the individual operating divisions. We made a practice after a few years of having each operating division undertake some problem of long-range significance. These divisional engineering departments of the 1920s were the ancestors of the modern corporate Engineering Staff. They were not the best arrangements in the world, for the divisional responsibility is to the product the division is sponsoring. The division, charged with bringing out a new model every year, constantly encounters new problems which are its primary responsibility. When you inject a piece of long-range research and development into this situation you are superimposing on an already loaded organization something to which it cannot properly give its attention. Recognition of this led to the formation of the Engineering Staff which was responsible to the central office.
This great advance in the engineering area was begun in 1929 when O. E. Hunt of Chevrolet was made the corporation vice president for engineering. Mr. Hunt then succeeded me as chairman of the General Technical Committee and took on the task of coordinating the advanced engineering work of the whole corporation. Under Mr. Hunt's guidance, the advanced engineering in the divisions became a corporation staff responsibility. The functions of the old General Technical Committee were gradually absorbed into other parts of the corporation. Special product-study groups, for example, were developed for certain major problems. The product study group was a "task force" of engineers assigned to a specific mission. Although in most cases situated physically within a specific division, a product-study group was a corporation activity, financed by its own corporation budget. The top operating group would try to identify the major directions in which car development was moving. We would then locate a capable engineer and set up a group under him to work on a selected problem. We set up the first product-study group in 1929 to adapt the Chevrolet for the use of Vauxhall in England; this group also designed cars for Opel in Germany, and other small cars. Afterward we set up the Suspension Product Study Group and the Transmission Product Study Group in the Cadillac Division (subsequently involving the Oldsmobile Division and the GMC Truck & Coach Division), and the Engine Product Study Group in the Buick Division. The first was responsible for developing independent front-wheel suspension; the second developed the fully automatic Hydra-Matic transmission for passenger cars and related units for larger commercial vehicles; the third was responsible for many improvements in the car engine. As time passed we changed the product-study groups from corporation task forces situated physically within the operating divisions into permanent separate organizations engaged in the continual process of research and testing in four vital areas—power development, transmission development, structure and suspension development, and the design of new types of cars. Eventually we took them out of the divisions and brought them together in the Engineering Staff, and called them development groups. They form the heart of the Engineering Staff today.
The Engineering Staff is closely linked to the Engineering Policy Group through the vice president of engineering, who directs the Engineering Staff and is chairman of the Engineering Policy Group. Since this group reviews the major steps in the development of new models and major departures from current engineering practice, it is in close touch with the engineering work of the operating divisions. The best thought of the Engineering Staff thereby makes a direct impact on the work of the divisions, and they make a direct impact on the development work of the Engineering Staff. The present organization, I believe, ensures the most rapid discovery of new concepts of engineering and their translation into current operating motorcars.
The Manufacturing Staff
Our over-all engineering work may logically be viewed as falling into two areas: one centers on the product and the other on the process of making it. The Manufacturing Staff works with conjectural, experimental, and pilot-model concepts; when these concepts prove successful in solving problems, they are adopted and used in our regular manufacturing operations in the form of improved manufacturing tools, equipment, and methods. This staff deals principally with the various aspects of manufacturing from the time the materials enter a plant until the finished product is shipped. These include machine and tool design, plant layout, materials handling, plant maintenance, equipment maintenance, work standards, methods engineering, materials utilization, and process and equipment development for the fabrication, final assembly, and test of the product. (Note 14-2.) This staff's general aims are to improve product quality, increase productivity, and reduce the cost of manufacture.
Centering these activities in a single corporate staff was the idea of one of our executives, B. D. Kunkle, who in 1945 felt that there was need for the same kind of function in the manufacturing area that the product-study group fulfilled in the product-development area. The manufacture of automobiles had rapidly become a more and more involved process requiring a constant study of new materials, new machinery, and new methods. Hence the idea of specialists to develop ideas for use in the manufacturing process. Logically, this was a staff function, and as such could be better fulfilled by a corporation group than by the individual divisions.
The technical work of the Manufacturing Staff is largely centered in the process-engineering activities of its Manufacturing Development Section, where the problem of automation arises. Process engineering necessarily includes automatic operations. Beyond the semiautomatic and automatic machine looms the image of the semiautomatic and automatic factory—the whole vague area summed up under the term "automation," in which it is often difficult to distinguish science fiction from practical manufacturing possibilities. The Manufacturing Staff will play a large role in this field in General Motors. How far automation should go is a difficult question which will have to be decided on the highest policy levels of the corporation. General Motors and the Manufacturing Staff have tended to be somewhat more cautious in this area than some other manufacturers. There exists a widespread belief that "if it's automatic, it must be good," but our experience shows that this is not always the case.
A good, balanced view on this subject was given in a paper presented before General Motors' 1958 Conference for Engineering and Science Educators, by Robert M. Critchfield, who was then in charge of process development. He said:
In recent years we've all heard a lot of talk about automation. It seems to me that most of this talk has done little more than confuse a great many people, including a few in the engineering profession, as to the true implications of the word. As you know, automation is nothing new; it's merely a relatively recent word for a process that has been going on in manufacturing for more than half a century, perhaps even as far back as the time of Eli Whitney's successful attempts to mass produce muskets for the continental armies. I can recall that we had some types of transfer machines and other automatic production devices 35 years ago in General Motors, which was long before the word "automation" was coined. Our misconceptions seem to stem from the fact [that] the literature overflows with too many notions that automation is the obvious solution to the mass production of a particular part or product involving a number of highly repetitive hand operations. Nothing could be further from the truth. The decision to mechanize or not to mechanize a production process or operation involves much more than the number of repetitive operations; it involves a good many fundamentals of economics .. .
By economic solution we mean the solution to the problem which will provide the best return on our capital investment. And, of course, produce the product according to specifications and of the desired quality. And the expression, the most effective use of the manual and mechanical elements, is meant to convey that hand operations do not necessarily disappear entirely when a process or an operation is mechanized.
While the completely automatic factory is an interesting possibility, there continues to be a good deal of immediate practical work to be done in reducing production costs, building better machines, improving factory layouts, and designing better factories—and in all these areas the Manufacturing Staff is making major contributions.
The Technical Center
The General Motors Technical Center, which was completed in 1956, is noted for its architectural elegance and breathtaking vistas; and there is no doubt that Eliel and Eero Saarinen, who designed it, created something unique. It is located on a 900-acre site northeast of Detroit, about twelve miles from the General Motors Building. At the center of the site is a twenty-two acre artificial lake surrounded on three sides by clusters of buildings. On the north side are the Research Laboratories. To the east are the Manufacturing Staff and the Engineering Staff buildings. To the south are the Styling Staff buildings, including a distinctive domed auditorium in which fairly sizable groups can gather for showings of the staff's work. Altogether, the Technical Center now has twenty-seven buildings, which house some 5000 scientists, engineers, designers, and other specialists. Wooded areas to the south and west help to seal the center from other real-estate developments and preserve its distinctive, rather "campus-like" atmosphere.
But of course the primary function of the Technical Center, as of all General Motors' facilities, is to get work done; and perhaps its real greatness resides in the fact that it is wonderfully functional as well as elegant. To understand why it has been a valuable investment for the corporation, easily worth the $125 million that has been put into it, the reader should know something of its origin.
The inadequacy of our previous facilities was obvious even before the end of World War II. Our different staff operations were then scattered all over the Detroit area, in a wide variety of rather makeshift quarters. I was especially struck by the unhappy situation of the Styling Staff, whose fabricating shops were located in an old Fisher Body building several miles from the staff headquarters. This building was adjacent to some heavy engineering work we were doing, especially on diesel engines, and Mr. Earl's men were oppressed by the noise. In any case, they did not have enough room.
During the war, the different staffs began to formulate plans for their facilities in the postwar era. From a consideration of this problem in relation to research and engineering, there began to emerge the idea of setting aside and developing one area for all the technical staffs. This implied some organizational changes, of course. I discussed these changes, and first proposed something like a new staff center, in a letter to Mr. Kettering, dated March 29, 1944:
My dear Ket:
I have been thinking about certain Corporation problems as affecting the long term position of our affairs and I would like to ask your point of view, if I may, on one of these problems as I see it.
I am not going to present an argument to you as to the importance of technological progress. We both recognize that as the keystone of our future position. In our Research activities down through the years, we had a marvelous balance between the scientific side and the engineering side . . . what I'm wondering about is, whether this marvelous balance that we have, can and will be maintained ... if I were to venture an opinion, I would be inclined to think that ten to twenty years from now, General Motors Research would be much more in the scientific area than it is now ... By the "scientific area" I . . . [mean] problems that were related directly [to our areas of interest], or perhaps indirectly, but not in any sense of the word what we normally term engineering in character.
Now I have in mind the point that you have always raised with me, in which I have agreed; viz., the difficulty involved and the importance of shortening the time when Research developments are incorporated in an engineering sense, in our products . . .
In an attempt to accelerate engineering progress in our products, down through the years I have tried several different approaches; first, to charge the Engineering Department of the Division with the development of a certain forward device, like the synchro-mesh transmission, for instance . . . Subsequent to that, we have, as you know, set up Product [Study] Groups under the direction of the general head of the Engineering Staff ... In that way we can carry our engineering development to the point of its practicability, after which it can be dealt with in an engineering or production way, as circumstances may justify . . .
I believe we should set up in the Corporation in the staff of the Vice President in charge of Engineering ... a properly accredited central engineering activity to deal with the car as a whole . . .
I would visualize the physical development of this activity to consist of a set-up close to, but outside, the City of Detroit. The Proving Ground (Note 14-3.) ... is probably too far away for contact ... I believe that such a set-up . . . would serve to reduce the time element in bringing into our products, advanced research work . . .
. . . Nothing need be done here to in any way change the combined engineering and scientific areas in which the Research ... is now dealing . . . and if in future years the trend of our research work should be more in the scientific area, then we would have a set-up that would make up for the delinquency . . .
Mr. Kettering responded to this suggestion with a plan for expanding the research facilities and moving all of them except the machine-tool and model shop to a new location. He sent this proposal to O. E. Hunt, who forwarded it to me. On April 13, 1944, I sent Mr. Hunt a letter making these points, among others:
First: I think we all agree . . . that . . . whatever it might cost would be inconsequential compared with what we will get out of it . . . after all, the necessity of additional facilities is what I might refer to as an end necessity ... we can only sell ... a product that is sound, desirable and advanced, technically.
Second: I am convinced that we need additional facilities for Research [and] . . . that the present facilities are not only inadequate but poorly located for the result that we must have. I am absolutely against spending more money for the same type of thing, where we are . . . Therefore, I believe that the project is sound and desirable so far as establishing an entirely new location where the operating conditions will be more in line ... as we look forward into tomorrow.
I concluded the letter by proposing an amendment to Mr. Kettering's plan, and suggested:
Let's set up what we would call—
GENERAL MOTORS TECHNICAL CENTER
. . . The center to which I have referred would comprise an expanded Research activity as defined by Mr. Kettering; and Engineering activity which would comprise Harley Earl's body design, cor[r] elated with the broadened product activity such as we are now conducting in Detroit . . .
By the end of 1944 this proposal had advanced to the point where I felt able to take it to the Administration Committee for discussion and approval. I quote from the minutes of the meeting of that committee for December 13, 1944:
Mr. Sloan advised the group that plans are being formulated to establish, in the vicinity of Detroit, a technical center in line with the corporation's policy of improving its technological position. He stated that the plans are in a tentative stage and complete data will be submitted at a later date. It is proposed that the center shall house the present activities carried on by the research division and the art and color section; and also provide facilities for engineering research of a character comparable to present product studies carried on by the central office engineering staff that are neither research activities presently carried on by the research division nor the individual engineering work carried on by the various divisional engineering groups.
In response to an inquiry from the chairman, those present expressed themselves as being enthusiastically in favor of the proposed technical center.
There remained the sizable question of where the center should be situated. After some discussion it was agreed that the center should be outside of highly congested areas, near a railroad, twenty five to thirty minutes from the General Motors Building, and adjacent to residential areas. It was also agreed that each activity should retain its individual identity. By the middle of December 1944 a suitable section of land meeting the various requirements had been located at the present site and we proceeded to option most of the West Half of Section 9, Warren Township, northeast of Detroit. All concerned agreed on the desirability of this location.
There also remained a question about the architectural and aesthetic standards we should aim at. Harley Earl had contended from the beginning that we should engage an architect of stature, and aim for a center that would be distinctive. Several others felt that any emphasis on high aesthetic standards might be detrimental to the practical operations of the center, and so they wanted General Motors itself to design and plan the project. At about the time this argument was in progress, I happened to visit the Ethyl Corporation laboratories in Detroit, which had just been completed. These handsome facilities made an excellent impression on me, and so I inclined to Mr. Earl's point of view more than I might have otherwise.
Among those who expressed some concern about the effects of an aesthetically oriented center was Mr. Lammot du Pont. He felt, quite properly, that he would not be fulfilling his responsibilities as a director unless he was satisfied on certain points. I wrote to him on May 8, 1945, arguing the advantages of retaining an outside architect, and on May 17 he replied that he was satisfied on the point. His letter said, in part:
The whole layout and the description of its preparation gave me the impression that the matter of aesthetic treatment, or as I would style it, "dressing up the place," had been an important factor from the beginning. I questioned whether the matter of appearance was of any importance in a project of this kind, the sole object being to get technical results. It was with this thought in mind that, in offering my remarks, I started out with the layout, which had been made by an architectural firm, whereas according to my line of thought, it would have been more appropriate to have had the layout made by an engineering firm or General Motors engineers.
I gather from your letter that it is not the intention to allow the appearances to interfere with the technical possibilities or to add substantially to the cost of the project. With those two assurances, my only remaining question with respect to the project would be answered.
We asked Mr. Earl himself to find the right architect for the center. He visited a number of leading architectural schools, and sought out the opinions of others who were knowledgeable in the field; and he found, in the end, that virtually everyone made the same recommendation. The selection of the Saarinens was not a difficult choice.
By July 1945 we had the architects' preliminary plans, an elaborate scale model, and artists' renderings of various buildings. On July 24 we announced the project publicly, and it received wide and favorable comment in the press. By October the property had been rough-graded and entirely fenced in. The project was then delayed by the great postwar strike, running from the fall of 1945 through March 1946, and by the fact that, in the booming postwar market, we found we needed expanded production facilities more than any other kind of building—even the Technical Center. Construction was resumed in 1949 and the Technical Center opened formally in 1956. I am satisfied that the decision to provide this aesthetically distinctive and functional center for our technical talents was a sound and desirable one.