444: Jack Teetor—Blind Faith to Blind Logic

Mike Rowe here.

It's the way I heard it.

And full disclosure: there was a time when I thought this podcast might be called People You Should Know, because I wanted very much to use this space to introduce you to people like today's guest.

And, Chuck, I assume you would agree with that.

Oh, yeah, this guy is definitely worth knowing, and particularly the subject matter that you're going to hear about is worth knowing.

And he's also a guy who you don't don't know.

Yes.

You don't know Jack Teeter.

And you probably don't know the subject of the documentary he made called Blind Logic, his great uncle named Ralph Teeter.

And you probably don't remember the company that he built.

It was called The Perfect Circle.

And it was out of Indiana.

And the Perfect Circle made these

Well, these perfect circles that you would put over a cylinder, basically, in a combustion engine.

Yes.

And improved lubrication, I believe, of the pistons.

Yes, I think if I'm remembering that correctly.

Well, before the cars were rolling off the supply,

not supply chain, what do you call it?

The assembly

line.

You know, things were very, very different, you know, before Henry Ford kind of owned the whole thing.

Yep.

And this is a story of a man who was born in 1895, who was a natural inventor, a skilled tradesperson, and who not only went on to build this incredible company that you probably never heard of, but also developed a couple of things that you probably used today,

especially if you own an automobile.

I refer in no particular order to the automatic transmission

and cruise control.

Now, what makes it doubly interesting, and honestly, It would be interesting enough if that's all Ralph Teeter did.

Pretty big accomplishments, yes.

He was blind.

Totally.

Yeah.

He lost his vision when he was five or six years old.

And his talent as a tradesperson was so immense,

and his personality was so stubborn, he was simply unable to act like he was blind.

And he was unable to hear the word no.

And so he wound up living a very normal life.

In fact, his own daughter, Marjorie, didn't even realize her dad was blind until she was, what, like 10 years old.

Yeah, Yeah, exactly.

There were people who encountered him on the street who had no idea that he was blind.

He was so good.

His hearing was so keen.

Yeah, wouldn't use a cane, never learned braille.

So many interesting things about this guy.

And what I think is kind of fun is the way he got onto my radar, which was a phone call from his great-nephew.

Or grandnephew.

Grandnephew, I suppose.

Grandgrand.

Call him what you will.

His name's Jack.

And Jack got it into his head that there needed to be a documentary about his great uncle.

And so he made one, and he asked me to narrate it.

And I read the script, and I said, you know what?

This guy's never made a movie before.

He's in the industry, sort of, you know, he's adjacent to it anyway.

But I just really admired the fact that, like so many other people, he learned that there was somebody in his family who was truly extraordinary.

and just decided the world needed to know about him.

So I did this thing.

I narrated this documentary, and it's won 15 awards so far.

And by the time you guys listen to this, it'll be available on Amazon and pretty much everywhere.

It's just weird how life works, man.

And so this guy, Jack Teeter, shows up at the office today.

He brings his girlfriend, Rose, who made me banana bread, and we sat down and we had a chat.

And I'm so glad we did.

Yeah.

We're calling it blind faith to blind logic.

The documentary is called blind logic, spoiler alert.

In fact, I've given you a great deal of spoilers, but I want you to listen to the conversation that we're about to have, knowing where it's headed, because it just makes the whole thing so more extraordinary, I think, right from the jump.

Yep.

Jack Teeter's here.

Banana bread is waiting right after this.

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Thanks for doing this.

God, I love your voice.

Well, I would hope so.

You hired me to narrate the story of your family's life.

I'm glad you like it.

Jack Teeter is the,

well, your great uncle was Ralph.

Right.

Ralph Teeter is the star of a documentary called Blind Logic.

Jack, the guy sitting across from me, reached out to me out of the blue, as people do from time to time, to see if, you know, there was any interest in narrating this project and I looked at your rough cut and I read the script and honestly Jack I'm not often taken aback there are a lot of great stories out there and I feel like I know most of them especially in this space but I just had no idea what your great uncle had accomplished who he was And I was just so impressed that somebody in his family would take the time to put together such a great tribute.

So congratulations.

Thank you.

I have to back up a little bit because it was my nephew, Scott, who suggested you.

We were sitting in Detroit at the Automotive Hall of Fame,

and I have a film crew.

We're getting ready to put Sarah Cook, president of the Automotive Hall of Fame, on camera.

And

Scott said, well, who are you going to get to narrate?

I said, well, I haven't thought about that yet.

You know, there's a lot of great guys.

And he said, Mike Rowe.

And I said, you know what?

That's a good idea.

Anyway, that was a genesis.

Here's the way I heard it, or at least the way I remember it.

By the time you got to marry, she came to me and said, some guy wants you to be the voice of Ralph Teeter,

right?

And I'm like, well, who's Ralph Teeter?

And she said, I don't know.

It's just going to be, we get a lot of inquiries, but this is how it starts, right?

And I'm like, well, so I Google Ralph Teeter.

I'm like, I think this guy

had something major to do with the automotive industry.

That's how it started.

And then I read the script and I was like, you know what?

I would do that, but I should probably narrate it and you should probably get somebody more famous than me to be the voice of your great uncle.

Well, you're absolutely right because I kind of liked your voice.

for Ralph Teeter.

And I think in my initial inquiry to Mary, that's what it was.

And I think she came back and said, oh, he won't do the voice of Ralph Teeter, but he'll narrate.

And

hey, that's great.

Well, this is some fun insight to how this industry works.

And I know you've had a ton of experience in Hollywood.

You've been out here for many years.

You've been involved in God knows how many marketing campaigns for movies that people are super familiar with already.

But

in my mind, when I read it, I'm like, I don't know that I want to be an actor in this thing, you know, because I was up to my neck at when you reached out in writing stories for this podcast called The Way I Heard It that were these short mysteries about people you know that did something interesting that you weren't familiar with.

So I was just, I was so focused on doing that, I didn't want to start acting again.

And I'm glad because you wound up getting Jeff Daniels to do your great uncle.

We're pretty lucky about that, too.

You know, he's from the heartland, a little town in Chelsea, Michigan.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And he brought that sort of Midwestern

tone, if you will, to Ralph Teer, which is what I was kind of looking for.

Yeah.

Just so people understand what in the world we're talking about, give me the thumbnail.

Who was your great uncle, and why should everybody in this country be familiar with his contribution to civilized life?

Well, he's known in the automotive circles for inventing the cruise control.

That's what people know about him, if they know about Ralph Teeter, because he's really an unknown person at this point, but this will all change.

His life basically

spanned the entire development of the American automobile industry as we know it.

For example, he was born in 1890.

1895

was when he was five years old about the first time a car

actually made it into

Indianapolis.

Not Detroit.

Not Detroit.

That's the first thing that would surprise people.

This story starts in Hagerstown.

Hagerstown, about an hour east of Indianapolis.

Indianapolis became the automobile capital of the world.

Now there were, I don't know, 120 different automobile manufacturers in Indiana.

Now, these were all custom-built cars.

And

this was all before Henry Ford, you know, developed the assembly line.

And that changed everything.

Yeah.

But backing up again to Ralph in 1895, the reason why that year is so

relevant is he had his accident.

This is when

he had an accident prying open a cabinet and

hit his eye, stabbed his eye.

A knife went straight into his eye, and he immediately lost the sight in that eye.

That was one eye, and then the disease moved to the other eye.

But here's another important thing.

What was the disease, Jack?

How does that work?

It must have been an infection of some kind?

It was.

And I knew you were going to ask that question.

That's my job to ask a tough question, Jack.

That's why I'm explaining it.

Not just a narrate.

I can't think of the name of it.

Maybe Chuck will Google it.

Not likely.

But that year was relevant, Mike, in the sense that his uncle, Uncle Charlie Teeter, invented the railroad cycle car for investigating all the tracks.

If they were right or if something wrong,

they were used.

And he invented this thing.

Different than like, you know, the old Gandhi dancers, right?

They get all these platforms and that was manual, but this was not?

This was based on the bicycle technology.

So in other words, a guy could ride it along the track and check to see how it was.

Well, that kind of revolutionized that whole industry.

And so the company...

was formed

and they were building these railroad inspection car cars.

And it kind of exploded.

They were purchased worldwide and

but the point of this is that this is where Ralph really developed his mechanical skills now he developed those even before his accident so he loved to play with tools yeah he hung out at the factory but after his accident that didn't stop his passion was tools how old was he again when he lost his sight he was five he was six by the time he completely lost his sight and his parents raised him to be

as if he could see.

They raised him as if he wasn't blind.

Right.

That's the really cool thing about it and that stuck with him his entire life.

Now here's another interesting thing

as a child.

So when he was 12 years old, 1902,

he wanted to build a motor car.

Well, how many 12-year-olds actually do this?

Who can't see?

Yeah, well, he got the help of my grandfather, Dan Teeter, who was four years older, and they built a motor car from scratch, machining each part by hand.

And

it went forward only, and it had a tiller, and he actually drove it.

The way he drove it was they strung a cable above the car on the street, and he would hold on to the cable.

So he would, you know, kind of stay straight on the street.

Quick sidebar.

Two things as I got into the script that immediately convinced me I wanted to be a part of this.

The first was your great-uncle's natural affinity for tools and the way they just became an extension of his person.

That was my granddad.

Carl Moore.

Same chip.

Right.

Okay.

He only went to the seventh grade, but there wasn't a tool in the box that you couldn't hand him that he didn't intuitively understand and know how to use.

His language was tools, and he was an incredibly handy man and made a pretty great living as an electrical contractor and worked in the trades all of his life.

So that resonated.

He also was a big shot in the Lions Club.

And for

their philanthropic project, they worked to raise money and help

the people at the Maryland School for the Blind.

So my pop is a tradesman's tradesman who spent a lot of his life working with and helping the blind.

In fact, when I was in the Boy Scouts, my Eagle Scout project was reading to the blind and building a bridge at the Maryland School for the Blind.

So if you're me, and you're looking for reasons to do a project with somebody you've never heard of, you got me in the first three pages.

I mean, I was done, I was your huckleberry right there.

Well,

I read about that, about what you did as an Eagle Scout, and that you were reading to the Maryland School of the Blind.

And I thought that was a really cool project that you did.

And Uncle Ralph would be very proud of you for doing that.

Well, I don't want to make it about me, but what I'm trying to get at is what kind of stuff

possessed this young boy at 12, 12, at 12, to dream that big.

And I'm also super interested in

would it have been better to have been born blind?

Or, you know, do you get five or six years of memories seared into your brain about everything from color and what people look like, right?

And like all of these other things.

And I've asked that question to a lot of people that I know without sight, and the answers always vary.

So I'm just curious about your take on that.

Well, that's very interesting because I've thought about that too.

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I can speculate from Ralph's standpoint, having seen for five years

gave him the ability to strengthen his mental capability of visualizing.

So in other words, when he was completely blind, he had to use all of his other senses.

Most importantly, I think hearing and feeling and touch.

But I think because he was able to see at one point, he may have used that in his library of visualization.

I don't know, but I do know that he had a gift for memory.

So

throughout his life and walking about town, he would memorize how many steps, where the buildings were, where everything was.

He memorized voices.

He recalled everybody's voice.

I don't know how he did that, but he did.

And it amazed me because he would, even if they had a cold, he would still know who it was.

Well, they say that when one sense goes, the others become sharpened.

Right.

But to this point, like you make the point in the movie, and I don't know if one of your family members elaborate on it or not, but this guy was like a bat, right?

I mean, like echolocation.

He could figure out where he was by footfalls and not just counting, but the way the sounds of the town reverberated back to him.

Good point.

You're absolutely right.

The echoes of, when he was young, the echoes of the horses walking and the buggies.

He could hear them bouncing off the town buildings and whatnot.

But

he did count on that.

And the other interesting thing,

he refused to use a cane.

He wanted to be as normal as possible.

And if he had a cane, well he would almost have to admit that he was blind.

And the other thing, he refused to learn Braille.

Wow, now that's controversial.

Now

I knew that when I was making the documentary,

but I didn't know why he refused to learn Braille.

And then I learned from the family, well, if he learned Braille, he would have to kind of admit that he was blind.

And he didn't really want to do that.

He didn't look at himself as handicapped and he didn't want people to focus on that.

And obviously his parents didn't either.

Right.

And people that had met him weren't certain that he was blind.

For example, his own daughter, my aunt Marjorie, she didn't know he was blind until 10.

And I think I have something in the movie about that.

Her classmates said, well,

your dad is blind and and this and that.

And she said, oh, no, no, he sometimes bumps into things, but he's not blind.

And so think about that.

Well, because when she was a young kid,

he would play with her and build toys and he built her a steam engine, but he would say, let me see this.

So she would hand him something and

he would see it.

through his touch.

But he would always say, let me see it, or I will show you.

Interesting.

So he just refused to act like a blind person.

Yeah.

Hard stop.

All right.

So that's just laying a little pipe so people understand.

You got a 12-year-old kid who wants to build a car who is completely blind and has been for seven years

and is filled with all the confidence necessary to believe he can make that happen.

So go ahead and walk me up to, I guess, perfect circle at this point.

Okay.

well, high school, not so much of a challenge because he seemed to get through that pretty well.

In fact, even becoming the manager of the basketball team

and

building the first electric light in Hagerstown for graduation, 1908.

He built a sign.

He wired it from a

generator that he got, and then he wired his family's home and then the town got wired up for you know electric

and college was a bit of a challenge he wanted to get his engineering degree

well University of Michigan had a great school

but they turned him down because they they didn't know how to teach a blind man engineering and

no fault of theirs because well how do you do that there's no playbook for this Yeah.

So his older cousin, Neva, took him to, she had a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.

They went.

He packed enough bags for a whole semester.

He was that confident that he was going to convince a dean of engineering.

Who's the dean?

Remember?

Henry Spangler.

Right, Spangler.

Yeah.

Henry Spangler.

And so he met with Henry

and,

you know, he wasn't quite convinced.

and he had to talk to the faculty and told Ralph come back at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning I'll have an answer but he had to talk to his faculty how are we going to teach this student engineering he's blind

well they all agreed we'll we'll let him try and they all didn't think that he would last more than two weeks but they let him try precisely because they knew he'd fail

yeah exactly and

he went through he graduated came back for his master's.

He was the first blind student to graduate from the university and the first blind engineer on record in the United States.

So that was great.

Anyway, he came back to the family company.

By that time, they were building internal combustion engines.

So

they evolved from the bicycle.

inspection car, the railroad inspection car, into the internal combustion engines.

As one does.

Yeah, in that time with the cars were, you know, and so they was the Teeter Hartley Motor Company.

And so that was going well.

But then, okay, 1917, 1918, World War I happens.

Well, men are going off to war.

Well, Ralph wanted to serve his country, but how?

And he was accepted for civil service at the New York Shipbuilding Company.

Well, this is kind of funny.

They gave him an office, but they didn't give him a job.

They didn't know what to do.

Or, you know, what are you going to do?

Here, Ralph, you got an office.

And he overheard them talking about a problem they had.

Because he can hear anything a mile away.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

He can hear anything a mile away.

And he overhears a problem they have.

They can't balance these turbine rotors in their torpedo boat destroyers.

destroyers.

The boats are breaking apart at high speeds.

So people understand the incredible amount of torque being generated by these turbines and if they're not perfectly in sync,

it's like those sympathetic vibrations that could shake a bridge right to the point where it would collapse.

So he thought, hey, maybe...

maybe they'll listen to me.

So he told them, he said, I think I can figure out what the problem is.

And they were,

hey, come on, what do you know?

You can't see anything.

But

he balanced drive shafts for race cars at Indy.

And he knew that he could balance these by spinning the rotors in opposite directions.

Right.

Now,

he thinks.

Why did he know that?

I honestly don't know.

It had never been done.

I don't know.

But he could touch and feel, and somehow they were balanced.

well by that time the uh war was ending and there was no need for those destroyers but uh the news the news picked up that story and everyone was kind of blown away that this this blind kid from hagerstown uh fixed something that the top naval engineers couldn't but anyway those ships were used in world war ii he actually solved the problem yeah he solved it by getting the turbines to spin counterclockwise and clockwise contemporaneously.

Yeah.

Yeah, amazing.

So he came back and

he had a bit more confidence in his engineering abilities and

his uncle Charlie and Ralph figured out that the key to the internal combustion engine was the piston ring.

And the piston rings in those days, you had to replace them like every 10,000 miles, 12,000 miles, maybe 8,000 miles.

It just didn't last.

So they figured out, let's focus on the piston ring because at that time, Henry Ford with the assembly line was

kind of revolutionizing the automobile business.

And Indianapolis was not the capital of the world anymore because all the custom built motor cars were going out of business.

Right, because Henry Ford is making it possible

for everybody.

And

their custom engines, they weren't

structured or built for the assembly line, so they really wanted to get out of that business the way I understand it.

So the piston ring was really going to be the focus.

And it's a very simple thing, right?

I mean, so people can visualize it.

Yeah, I should have brought some in.

Six inches inches maybe in diameter.

They're like this, and say this is the cylinder.

They wrap around the cylinder and they actually lubricate the cylinder wall.

So when the cylinder is going up and down, and you got eight cylinders, there's six in a car, they're going very fast.

So was it self-lubricating at that point?

To some extent, but their rings became more

advanced and they were able to lubricate and they also designed fluid actuated well actually Ralph invented a fluid actuated gear shift in 1924 so that came shortly after he came back from serving in the military right anyway so they focused their attention on this and the company kind of evolved to the Indiana Piston Ring Company and then in 1926 it became Perfect Circle and it became Perfect Circle because

the advertising department came up with a trade name for their piston rings, and they came up with Perfect Circle.

And then that trade name became so popular that they decided to name the company.

And that was 1926.

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So they basically then had a device that they were mass producing and selling directly into Detroit.

And so this device, this piston ring, became an integral part of everything that came off the line for some time.

Well, it became so important that

every new engine coming out of Detroit or any other manufacturer that was still around, there was still a few in Chicago.

Indianapolis probably had, Fred Dusenberg had his going on for a while.

So every engine required a special ring.

So in other words, you couldn't mix all these rings with all these other engines.

They had different diameters of cylinders

and everything.

So he would go up to Detroit.

and work with their engineers.

Okay, you got a new engine, now we need a special ring.

Anyway, so the business really grew

because of the need for piston rings.

And over the course of the years,

technology got better and they didn't have to replace them every 10,000 miles.

Then they could last 20, 30.

And nowadays, you don't even replace them.

Right.

But at the time.

It was an integral part, and those parts were still coming out of Hagerstown, right?

Yeah, now this is.

What did that do to the town to have a company anchored in it that was experiencing that degree of success?

It did unbelievable things for the town and the community.

And the town had

was really kind of a village when you think of it, 2,000 people.

There was another town close by,

Newcastle, small town.

Richmond was 20 minutes away, small town, but a little bit bigger.

So the first factory, of course, being in Hagerstown, and it employed a lot of people.

And

then they built another factory.

They were expanding pretty rapidly.

One of the interesting points here,

Ralph and his uncle Charlie, and the rest of the teeters that were in the company cared very deeply about the community.

They cared deeply about the people that worked at the company because they were their neighbors.

So if the town needed a post office, the company built it.

If they needed a new school, the company built it.

During the Depression years, this is kind of interesting, 1929, you know, Black Tuesday,

the company was doing very well because

even though automobile sales, new car sales sunk, everybody who had a car had to keep them running.

Yeah.

And the trucks delivering and so on and so forth.

And so they were buying piston rings.

So piston ring, their business was doing good, but

recession-proof or depression-proof.

Yeah, it was.

And

Uncle Charlie, he was the head of the company, and Ralph was an engineer.

He would hire anybody who was out of a job and find work for him at the company.

It was like those company towns you read about, like Woolrich,

right?

The company that makes

they became so successful.

It was such a terrific relationship.

You know, I mean, look, everything comes down to execution, obviously.

And I guess you can have a bad company in a town that's dependent on it.

But that certainly wasn't the case with Woolrich, and it certainly wasn't the case with Perfect Circle.

Yeah, Ralph and his uncle Charlie took

great pride in helping the community and the people.

And now these workers worked in the factory

and they were skilled workers and they were trained.

So if they wanted to work for the company they would be trained.

But they all worked in the factory, worked with their hands.

And as the company expanded, soon they had four factories.

And at the height of,

I think think they had 6,500 workers during World War II because they had to hire a lot of workers for wartime production they they converted everything to wartime production and they hired a lot more workers and

because they had so many workers in these small towns they knew

their responsibility was for the communities

and as I said before they would build libraries and schools.

And

at that time,

they were paying them very good wages.

I mean, these people could go out and buy houses.

They were getting benefits.

Now, back in those early days, in the 20s and 30s, workers weren't really getting benefits.

They were getting early health benefits.

They were getting

even a pension plan that was developed.

The company built and formed a credit union so they could save their money and

have a pension.

And back then,

you know, you didn't hear about that much.

No, no, but I think

it's worth talking about now because for me, one of the most interesting parts of the movie, and I know it's controversial to talk about it today, but I want to, it was the advent of the unions.

the role that Charlie and Ralph assumed when the unions came to town.

Because not every town had the relationship with the automotive industry that Hagerstown had with Perfect Circle.

And that just is so poignant, you know,

when you look at the town differently all of a sudden.

And when people are coming in from out of town and those protests and those riots, that was national news, and Ralph was right in the thick of it.

Well, the interesting thing about the union thing

was that

Ralph and the company were very

friendly and respectful towards the early unions.

And they signed contracts and

they were amenable to work with the union.

And those early unions were a little bit different before the big

giant union in Detroit.

UAW.

UAW, CIO.

And

the interesting thing that was happening was that these little small towns with these factories, this Perfect Circle became on the radar of the Union in Detroit.

And

because they were so powerful in Detroit, they had the big three.

They were going after parts companies and Perfect Circle was on their radar and the other parts companies too.

And then they decided to come down to Hagerstown and again their first trip down in 48, 1948, Ralph signed a contract.

It was fine, okay.

But at that time, the union was a little bit different.

The workers didn't have to join.

It was a union contract, certain amount of wages.

And then they came back again, and then they were demanding more.

And that was about three months after they came down.

So they were

demanding more.

Was it the workers themselves jack or was it purely outside forces coming in to unionize

like i'm always curious about how these things originate well they originate with union reps that go down to the town and then they meet with the workers outside of business and restaurants or wherever they they gather and they they try to convince them hey look you guys are working, you need to be protected.

And I think to some extent that was going on, certainly before 1955, that was the big mess.

And so there were some workers that were convinced they wanted to sign up with the union.

And the reason is, World War II, when they were hiring so many workers, they probably hired another 2,500 workers

that

did not understand

the value that the company places on employees.

Certainly they didn't know what happened during the Depression and that they were building schools and

really building the community.

They had no recollection of that.

So they were just workers working a job and wanted more money and they probably thought, oh, yeah, the union's going to come in.

This is great.

Well, anyway, they came back and it got a little ugly, if you recall from the movie.

And then they came back again, and this time they brought in a thousand sympathizers from other 1,200, I think.

They set up a tent city.

They brought violence to

the townspeople.

And they weren't local.

They were from outside.

And they were going to try to muscle there.

And it just got ugly.

I mean, the governor had to declare martial law, you know, after the local police couldn't handle it.

Yeah.

And

people died?

No.

There was gunshots.

There was a couple of people that got shot and wounded.

It got to the point where they had to send in tanks.

That's when the National Guard came in.

And

you're oddly understated here, Jack.

Once we start talking about the advent of tanks,

I mean, as I recall,

as the narrator of Blind Logic, the film we've been talking about now with Jack Teeter, people were barricaded inside

the facility.

I mean, it was super sporty.

It could have gone way off the rails.

Yeah, Mike.

I mean, they could have.

They decided to stay in the factory.

and some managers and workers together, and they were actually armed because they thought they were going to be bombed.

There were threats to bomb the factories.

And it got to the point where this is getting real dangerous, folks.

And one guy,

one guy had his wife send clothes in, his clean underwear, and

because the mail kept coming.

But

I just figured everybody's shorts are going to be filthy at this point.

I mean, there's a lot of fear in the air.

If you listen to this podcast with any degree of regularity, you know that the folks who build our submarines, the maritime industrial base, needs to hire 140,000 tradesmen over the next decade.

Well, never mind all that.

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At buildsubmarines.com.

It was.

And I actually talked to a couple of older folks that are still around that were there during the riots and the strikes.

And this one fella who ran, operated the gas station where all the teeters came,

he was saying, oh yeah, they'd come in and they'd harass us.

And they harassed townspeople.

And it was really scary.

And he said, they came in and harassed me and said,

to the teeters, tell me about the teeters, tell me about this Ralph Teeter, you know.

And he said, well, no, he wouldn't say anything.

He just played dumb.

It was really bad.

But they got through it.

And here's the interesting thing.

They settled on the exact same terms that Ralph offered them.

Right.

The exact same terms.

So there was no material improvement.

There was no gain.

Because they were already, he was already treating his workers in relative terms pretty damn well.

And Ralph's, his feeling was: if the union can convince the workers to join,

that's another thing.

He's not going to get in their way.

And they did.

One factory

joined the union.

They kind of caved into the demands.

The other three stood strong.

So what ultimately became of Perfect Circle?

And

Charlie at some point dies.

Yeah, 1937, he died.

And then Lathair, his son Lathair took over.

1946, Ralph Teeter became president.

And...

Right after the war.

Yeah, right after the war.

Around that time, I guess, well, and during the 50s, they were now selling their products in 91 countries around the world.

And so the 50s were kind of cool because after the strike, Ralph had already by that time invented the cruise control.

But

back in the late 40s,

he couldn't convince his own board of directors to manufacture the cruise control.

Because it never fails.

All great, obvious ideas are initially greeted with insanity.

You must be crazy.

Who in the world is going to get in a car and push a button or turn a dial that lets that car determine its own speed or set that speed?

That was heretical.

And I'm only making the point because three days ago, I got in the back of a Waymo with no driver and just sat there like a Christmas ham.

Rose and I did that too.

Yeah.

Rose.

Rose, by the way, is Jack's

girlfriend.

Quick sidebar.

You made me banana bread, Rose?

Yes, I did.

Oh, goodness.

Look at this.

and there's...

What is that?

Is that rosemary on there?

Yeah, rosemary and

laughing.

Sorry.

This is

on that sidebar.

That's kind of her world-famous.

World-famous banana bread?

Yeah, yeah.

Everybody loves it.

All right, well, I'm going to dig into that once we're done talking.

I'm just going to let it sit here right now

as a tease.

So I have to add something, Mike, that you were saying about...

the cruise control and the Waymo.

But

going back to 1924 when he invented this automatic gear shift, he went to his manufacturing friends and said, look, we've got to manufacture this.

And they said, there's no way that people are going to pay for the luxury of an automatic transmission, an automatic gear shift.

And,

well, he sold his patent to Bendix.

Wait a minute.

I forgot that.

How instrumental was Ralph in ushering in the automatic transmission?

Oh, very.

1924, the fluid-actuated gear shift.

There was an automatic gear shift.

And

his friends, and he had a lot of friends in manufacturing, and they just said, no one's going to pay for the luxury of...

Not shifting gears.

Yeah.

Yeah, because it was going to be too expensive.

Well, fast forward to what you were saying about the cruise control, the company didn't want to manufacture it.

And, well, he was very disappointed.

But he built a couple of samples for the truck business, but that was slow to get any enthusiasm for whatever reason.

Other things were going on.

But the company was really growing at that point.

Then after the Union strike,

we'll say 1957, he had the cruise control, really, he had a good model of the cruise control, and he convinced Detroit companies to test it.

Is Perfect Circle still Perfect Circle?

No, it was

the last factory

closed in 1995, 100 years after the company was born.

It was bought by,

well, 1963, the company was acquired by Dana.

That was a big company.

And then they bought...

Perfect Circle and they kept the brand and then it was subsequently sold to a German company.

So, a German company today

has Perfect Circle brand, and they're making piston rings.

Okay, so it gets a little convoluted, but Perfect Circle goes where it goes.

But Ralph is still around, and he takes the idea for cruise control to the big guys in Detroit, yeah,

to test it.

Yeah,

and Chevrolet, Ford, and Chrysler, I believe, were testing.

And at the same time,

he was getting the company kind of excited about it.

So one of the reasons why he was getting them excited about it is he turned over the presidency to Bill Prosser, his longtime friend and company veteran, because he was very smart about this.

He became chairman, but he knew that Bill Prosser could sell the board on the product because he was very good in sales.

So Bill Prosser sold the board

on the cruise control on manufacturing.

So they had a press conference and they flew all these journalists in from Detroit.

Meanwhile, the Detroit is testing the product and so it's getting all this press and excitement.

And Chrysler decides they invite Ralph up.

We're going to put it on our 1958 model Chrysler New Yorker and one of their other ones.

So they were the first to introduce it, and the company manufactured it.

And then Cadillac came in in 1959.

And then I think it was Oldsmobile, then Ford Chevrolet.

Then they all came in.

But it wasn't overnight.

It's not like somebody flicked the switch and said, oh, we've got to have the cruise control.

It took time.

People had to write.

Like, you've got to sell that down in a lot of different ways across the whole country.

And it just wasn't immediately embraced, is my point.

And once again, your great uncle is just sitting there hearing, no, no, no, that's not going to happen.

They're never going to get an automatic transmission.

They're never going to take cruise control.

No, no, no, never going to happen.

Do you know he said

in 1974, he said, if I could have seen, I would have never developed the idea.

Mike, he came up with the idea in 1936.

He, of course, had drivers for him, and one of them was Harry Lindsay, his patent attorney.

And

Harry was a bad driver.

Let's just say it like it is.

He was a throttle brake driver.

He's a patent attorney.

Yeah.

But he's got a lot going on.

So, you know, I can only visualize Ralph sitting there like this.

Geez, Harry.

I'm getting nauseous.

So he said to himself well okay I got to invent something that will make the car go steady and so for 10 years he tinkered in his workshop and this is where he gets in with his hands he built a cruise control in his workshop basement workshop with his hands look you don't want to overstate it but a blind man developed cruise control with his bare hands working with tools in his basement and that same guy says he never could have done it had he been able to see.

Yeah.

That's where your movie lands.

And look, we can talk about all the zigs and zags.

Why bother?

Watch Blind Logic.

It's terrific.

I want to spend the rest of our time just talking about the man and his impact on you and why you decided.

to dive into this project, which clearly got out of hand.

I mean, it sucked up years of your life, obviously.

Oh, yeah.

But

Mike, before you move on, I did find the name of that disease, and it's kind of interesting because it's called sympathetic ophthalmia.

That's it, yeah.

And basically, it comes from if you have an eye injury, particularly a piercing one in one eye, then the other eye develops sympathy for it and degenerates by itself.

It's really crazy, yeah.

But that's what it's particularly prevalent in puncture wounds to one eye.

Wow, Yeah.

Well, you know what?

It kind of rhymes in a weird way with the other thing that I was trying to come up, think of, which was sympathetic vibrations.

Correct.

So like, you know, if you're marching in the army and you get to a bridge, you break cadence.

Because if you're

marching all together, you get a hundred thousand men marching across a bridge, those sympathetic vibrations will do something to the structural integrity of the iron and the basic structure itself, and it will collapse.

So, it's a very powerful thing for people to be doing everything at the same way at the same time.

And in a weird way, I guess your body somehow,

right?

I mean,

what a stray, like, why would my right eye go blind because my left eye did?

What's it called again?

I'm fascinated by that.

Sympathetic ophthalmia.

Sounds like I'm lifting.

That's the term.

That's why I keep Chuck.

Every now and then.

I knew he'd come up with it.

It took him 40 minutes, but he found it.

Yeah.

And he chimed in at just the right time.

For the record, I had it a long time ago.

I just waited for a minute to jump in.

Thank you, Chuck.

I'm glad you came up with that.

Fascinating.

Really, really interesting.

But

Ralph married, had kids?

One.

One kid.

Yeah.

Well, that's.

Marjorie.

Yeah.

That's another whole story about my aunt Nellie, Ralph's wife.

I mean, she was a force in her own right.

But Marjorie was their only child,

and

she wrote a book called One Man's Vision, 1995.

And when I read that book, I mean, it was just amazing to me.

She was...

told by a few people to write a book about your dad.

You know, he's really quite amazing.

You should write a book.

And she was all for it and thinking of maybe having having a professional writer write it.

And an editor told her, oh, no, you have to write the story.

Anyway,

you asked about Ralph.

I guess Ralph, as a person, the way I remember as a kid, was

very kind, an incredible sense of humor.

He loved to laugh.

He loved people.

And

he had a gift to make everyone feel comfortable no matter who they met.

And he had an impact on so many people throughout his life,

including me and my brother and sister and Ralph's grandkids.

But he was an amazing man.

And what he was like at the office, I don't know.

I can only assume from what I hear from other people that he was an incredible leader and he cared deeply about his workers.

He was passionate about the company and that was his life.

So

the inspiration for me to make this documentary

actually started in 2013 at a family reunion and my father, Jack, was still alive.

My aunt Marjorie was still alive.

And we met at Lake Wauase where Ralph had a summer home.

Yeah, he was kind of like a boat guy, too, on top of everything else.

Was he a boat guy?

He built speedboats.

Of course, he did.

Yeah, and he became friends with Chris Smith,

as in Chris Kraft?

Yeah, as in Chris Kraft.

In fact, he bought a lot of Chris Kraft, but he built speedboats.

And he was crazy for speed.

So speedboats,

I think, oh, yeah, he bought Miss Detroit too,

and that was

the late, I don't know, 19, 19, early 20s.

I can't remember.

But that boat went 70 miles an hour.

Now, unlike a car, he can drive the boat because he get somebody next to him.

Well,

that I don't know, but I do know that 70 miles an hour was a crazy speed back then.

Right now, no.

But back then, that was crazy for a speedboat.

On the water.

Yeah.

70 miles an hour on the water is different than 70 miles an hour on MacAdam.

Yeah.

Concrete.

So

he loved Lake Wawaseee because he could build speedboats and race them.

So he convinced his parents when he was young to get a cottage.

So he spent his summers up there.

Anyway, that's where we had our family reunion.

And I don't know who...

mentioned it or how it came up, but the idea of a movie about Ralph Teeter came up, and it might have been my Aunt Marjorie.

and

so they kind of looked at me okay where do we go from here and why did they look at you well because they knew your resume

yeah they knew my resume and real brief what is that just so people understand well I worked at Universal Pictures for most of the 80s and in marketing and I moved into production so I had us and distribution I had a sense of how films were made

and I went to UCLA Film School.

So they looked at me okay where do we go I said well that's a great idea

and but I had my career I had a job and things going to I said well let me let me start with an outline and then maybe I'll develop a script and adapt the book so I did that off and on for 10 years

and it wasn't until

2021 that I decided, well, I have a script.

Oh, I should backtrack.

Before my father passed away,

he read an early draft of the script and a very early draft, so he was pretty excited.

My Aunt Marjorie read an early draft before she passed away, but they were really rough.

But the fact that those two knew that I was going to make this documentary makes me feel good today.

Anyway, I refined the script and had 48 revisions.

And then 2021, I decided, okay, I'm going to make it.

Stop talking about it, Jack.

You know, call your cousins up and say, you're coming to Hagerstown.

You're going to put them on camera.

I'll bring a film crew to Hagerstown.

I'll start there.

Now.

Were they nervous?

Were they enthused?

They were excited.

Well, my cousin Ralph is very excited

about this.

He was named after

grandpa.

Grandson.

Grandson, Marjorie's son.

Yeah.

Of course.

Anyway, we put them on camera and then it took two and a half years to make it.

I didn't know if I had

images.

I didn't know if I had footage.

I didn't know where I was going to get it.

I had the script, but where am I going to put the visuals?

I didn't know if I had them.

Cousin Ralph, he had an archive in his basement, and I spent a week going through images and just see if I had enough stuff, but I honestly didn't know.

And I was kind of going on blind faith.

Anyway, it sort of worked out.

Yeah, I'd say it sort of worked out.

It worked out to the point now.

Blind faith led to blind logic.

Led to blind logic, which is circling back to one man's vision, the feature film.

We're in development of a feature film now.

Oh.

Yeah.

Terrific.

Yeah.

That could be huge.

Well, we're excited about it.

We have the writer,

Howie Klausner, who wrote Space Cowboys and the film Reagan.

So I have the film team that brought you Reagan last year.

With Sean McNamara, directed.

Mark Joseph?

Yeah.

Mark Joseph was the producer and Dennis Quaid was the star.

That's right.

Dennis Quaid sat right where you're sitting.

I know.

I watched that podcast.

Well, you've got excellent titles.

I love Dennis Quaid.

And Mark Joseph might be there sometime soon, too.

Okay.

Good, great.

I love it.

What a weird, perfect circle little world this year.

This is, isn't it?

I didn't even know that that connection.

That's the connection.

Anyway,

we're working on the script now.

Wow.

So what's the reception been like?

I hear this thing's winning awards here and there.

We've been very lucky.

We have 15 awards now.

We screened it last year in

the Midwest, in various towns.

And the reaction, in colleges, engineering schools, the response has been great.

And now we're going to release, it's going to be released July 8th.

So on Amazon and across digital platforms, on-demand cable, Cox Charter Spectrum.

It'll be on iTunes, Apple TV.

What else do we have?

Get you, you did it.

You actually did it.

Well, with the help of the distributor, you know, I had to get a distributor.

And a very modesty aside, and I'm a hell of a narrator.

We're hell of a narrator, is right.

So we're going to get out there now, and

it's very exciting because I didn't know if we were going to ever get it distributed.

You never know.

You make a film, you hope that people will like it when you screen it.

You hope that maybe it's going to be good enough that a distributor will want it, but you just don't know.

You don't know.

You just don't know.

But Jack, if your great uncle could run a company like Perfect Circle and could figure out how to keep a submarine from falling apart in the First World War and suggest that an automatic transmission might actually stick, and then to further suggest that controlling the speed of a vehicle might be something the average driver would appreciate since the world's filled with so many poor drivers, to hear no at every turn

and to overcome all of that.

The movie that you're talking about, this documentary is terrific, but the movie you're talking about needs to be made because that is an inspirational.

Everybody listening to this thing has felt sorry for themselves at some point in the last week.

And they've looked at themselves in the mirror and they say, How am I going to deal with this?

My freaking boss is up my butt over here, and this, and this, and this, and that, and that.

And there's your great uncle staring down the unions, staring down the bosses, staring down the military brass, staring down the dean of

staring them down without any eyes.

Staring them down without even seeing them.

That's That's the funny part.

Staring them down without even seeing them.

You know, look, I want to just compliment you again.

I wanted to be involved because I think your great uncle is a person the country needs to know.

But on a personal level, I love the whole Sisyphian, quixotic venture of making a movie without a distributor and building an airplane while it's in the air and flying by the seat of your pants.

My mom wrote her first book when she was 80.

Oh my gosh.

And she's written three more since, and they're New York Times bestsellers, right?

Your uncle, it's a story of persistence and resiliency.

Oh, you're absolutely right.

Plenty of talent there, but you don't get credit for talent.

Those were the cards you dealt.

You know, the stuff you decide to do with the cards you have makes you either interesting or memorable or notable or something.

And the fact that you picked it up after he was gone and did that for your family, I think

that's as important to me as what your uncle did.

I know a lot of people who have sat down to write a book about their family because they're so impressed with something

somebody did, right, in their chain.

And they want to be remembered and they want their ancestors to be remembered.

And there's something so poetic and beautiful about that.

And it's hard to write a book without a publisher.

And it's double hard to make a movie without a distributor, simply because you're afflicted with the knowledge that you come from pretty good stock.

I think a book may even be harder.

I wouldn't even know how to start a book.

But

the one thing that you were saying about this being an inspiring story, everything that we got from the screenings, people walk out and say, I'm incredibly inspired.

I have hope.

I'm inspired to go out there and do something.

And I think that's the takeaway that I would like people to have is that

you mentioned it before.

I mean we're all faced with things in life and challenges, but gee, look what Ralph did, and we have our eyesight.

It is inspiring.

I was inspired every day making the movie because of Ralph, knowing what he did.

I'm not worried about if I can get a distributor.

I want to make the best movie I can because Ralph is sitting there over my shoulder, giving me inspiration.

And he inspires people.

So, yeah, that's the takeaway from all this.

Well, his work was a heck of a legacy, and your tribute, you know, will live a lot longer than we will.

I'm going to open up this banana bread, Rose, if you don't mind.

You open up the banana bread, and by the way,

oh, yeah, are there gifts?

I have blind blind logic hats.

Nice.

And t-shirts for you, Chuck, and Mary.

Great.

And just so people know, this will air after July 8th.

So the movie is out now.

It's out right now.

Yes.

Great.

Tune into Amazon and itunes,

Comcast, Cox.

Hey, do you care if when we edit this together, we use some footage from the dock?

No, I'd like you to.

I'd like you to.

Yeah, in fact,

I'll work with Chuck anything you need.

Sure, yeah, okay, great.

Hey, Rose, do me a favor.

Walk next door and get a knife.

Hey, or Taylor, can you do me a favor and grab a knife out of the utensil drawer?

We're going to have some banana bread before we say goodbye.

Yeah.

I'm going to try this on

camera so I can give it an honest assessment.

Oh, that.

Oh, that's great.

Wow.

I'm very particular about my banana bread.

Be careful what you do because this could inspire Rose to open up a little business here.

Banana bread.

If I take a bite of this and I drive down Santa Monica six months from now and Rose's banana emporium, the banana bread emporium is

open for business, we're going to need to talk about a percentage, I'm afraid, because I, you know.

Oh, yeah, she's very good with giving you a percentage.

I'll narrate your commercials, Rose.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I'm just going to take a little piece from the end here.

Oh, look at that.

Oh, it's so moist.

That's a pretty good banana bread.

Welcome.

Pretty good banana bread, bro.

Well, thank you.

You're very welcome.

I'm glad you like it.

Hey, thanks for the swag,

the carbohydrates, and your time.

Thank you, Mike.

And Chuck, thank you.

Thank you very much.

I really admire what you've done, and I hope it inspires other people to tell the stories of their own families.

I was admired and inspired by your book, by the way.

I love those stories.

Oh, my gosh.

The Jim Morrison one.

I read through all these stories trying to pick who's he talking about,

and then I catch it, and sometimes, where's he going with this?

Well, I'd love that book.

Your great uncle would be a terrific subject for one of those stories, even though most people don't know who he is.

The fact, look at you plugging my own book on my own podcast.

That's because I love it so much.

The stories in here are phenomenal.

Well, if I do another one, I'll see if I can't get Ralph in there because, look, the Mel Mel Brooks one.

That's a good one.

That's a good one.

Spoiler alert now.

Now people know it's Mel Brooks.

You're killing me, Jack.

Yeah, but they're going to read it and they won't know it's him.

That's right.

They won't know.

But

I'll leave you with this, folks.

The car you have today would not resemble the thing you're driving, but for the man we've discussing.

We've been discussing.

Ralph Teeter and his grand nephew.

Right.

Jack.

Grand or great, yeah.

Whatever it is.

Let's start with.

What's better, grand or great?

Like, would you rather be remembered as the great Jack Teeter or that Jack Teeter, he was grand?

They don't call it the great old Opry.

No, that's true.

How about Ralph Teeter's great nephew?

That's not bad.

But they also didn't call it the Grand Depression.

No, that's not exactly.

Thanks for listening, folks.

You're a terrific guest.

You're welcome back anytime.

Thanks.

And Rose, yeah, I'll see you at the Banana Bread Emporium.

This episode is over now.

I hope it was worthwhile.

Sorry it went on so long, but if it made you smile,

then share your satisfaction in the way that people do.

Take some time

to go all along

and leave a sorry review.

I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge.

But in this world, the advertisers really like to judge.

You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two.

All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review.

All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review.

All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review.

not two all you've got to do is leave a quick five star review

all you got to do is leave a quick even if you hate it five sauce especially if you're here

thank you

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