John Henry Patterson was an American promoter and manufacturer of cash registers.
Background
John Henry Patterson was born on December 13, 1844 in Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio, United States. He was the seventh of eleven children of Jefferson Patterson and Julia Johnston, and a descendant of John Patterson, of Scotch-Irish stock, who emigrated to Pennsylvania about 1700. He was born on a farm of well-to-do parents, and reared in rural surroundings in the neighborhood of the then small town of Dayton, Ohio.
Education
John Henry Patterson attended the local schools and the Central High School of Dayton, Ohio, then spent a year, 1862 - 1863, at Miami University. In 1864 he enlisted in the 1316t Ohio but his regiment got only as far as Baltimore and he saw no active service. Continuing his education, he entered Dartmouth College and graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1867. What he regarded as an acquisition of much useless knowledge at college was the foundation of a lifelong suspicion and dislike of college methods and college men.
Career
Upon returning from Dartmouth as a college graduate and veteran of the war, John Henry Patterson found nothing to do. He remained upon the family farm for a time, then took a position in 1868 as a canal toll-gate keeper in Dayton. Later he became a coal merchant with his brothers. In 1884, at the age of forty, casting about for a more profitable business than the coal business, he acquired a controlling interest in the National Manufacturing Company at Dayton which manufactured cash registers. The next day after its purchase he was so greatly ridiculed for investing in such a failure that he offered $2, 000 to the seller to release him from his bargain, but his offer was refused. The factory of the company, which in December 1884 became the National Cash Register Company, was situated in a dismal slum section of the town of Dayton. There were thirteen employees on the payroll. At an age when most men are consolidating their successes, Patterson started into business with a product that nobody wanted, few knew how to use, and one that met the violent opposition of all those who had to employ it. From this beginning he established eventually a plant whose product became practically indispensable to the commercial world and in a sense revolutionized commercial transactions.
In the first four years of his control of the company Patterson suggested many improvements in the construction of the cash register and took out several patents in his own name. John Henry Patterson was not a mechanic, however, and after 1888 left the development of the machine to experts. He devoted his main efforts to the sale of his product and in this field he developed advertising practices which were new and unusual. Sales conventions, sales schools for the education of salesmen and customers, service to customers to maintain the mechanism in operating condition, the establishment of the closed quota territory guaranteeing to salesmen their territory as theirs exclusively, generous payments of large commissions for performance, were all evidences of the new salesmanship that he introduced. At the outset he began to use advertising circulars and always stressed direct mail advertising. In the factory, he converted the grime and gloom of his original plant into pleasant surroundings.
John Henry Patterson established an industrial welfare organization to take care of the education, health, and working conditions of his employees and their families, he established a schoolhouse for their education and entertainment, and he converted his factory ground into an industrial garden spot. But his lavish provisions for the health and comfort of his employees were prompted as much by materialistic as humanitarian motives, for he often said: "It pays. " His competitive methods were so aggressive that he was left supreme in his field, but he was repeatedly subject to the attacks of government agencies and of other business men. He demanded a maximum of efficiency from his employees and was often merciless in his treatment of them. He had retired from the presidency of the company in 1921, but was chairman of the board of directors at the time of his death.
John Henry Patterson died on May 7, 1922, at seventy-eight, while he was on his way to Atlantic City.
Achievements
Personality
Physically John Henry Patterson was wiry and energetic, and he possessed a highly erratic temperament. He had a genius for management and a mind that retained every detail of his business. Easily obsessed by an idea, Patterson was unhappy until he had converted it into action. After he had been placed on a regimen which included callisthenics in the morning John Henry Patterson demanded that the executives in his factory assemble at five o'clock every morning for similar exercises.
Interests
Good government, aviation, diet, horticulture, horses, education, and invention were but a few of John Henry Patterson's hobbies.
Connections
On December 18, 1888 John Henry Patterson married Katherine Dudley Beck, of Brookline, Massachussets. She died in 1894. They had two children.