John Henry Patterson, founder of the National Cash Register Company in Dayton, Ohio passed away on May 7, 1922, in Oakwood, Ohio, at age 77.   He was born December 13, 1844 in Dayton, Ohio.

John Henry Patterson was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1844. He spent his childhood working on the family farm and in his father's sawmills. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1867 and went to work as a canal toll collector until 1870. That year, he began managing the Southern Ohio Coal and Iron Company. He became an investor in the National Manufacturing Company in 1882, buying it out with his brother by 1884 to form National Cash Register Company.

In 1893 he constructed the first "daylight factory" buildings with floor-to-ceiling glass windows that let in light and could be opened to let in fresh air as well. This was in an era when sweatshops were still in operation elsewhere. He hired John Charles Olmsted to landscape the grounds of the National Cash Register Company campus in Dayton, with spacious lawns and landscaping with colorful plantings. Olmsted also had a hand in designing the residential community surrounding the plant (South Park) as well as a park system for the City of Dayton.

Based on a 16-page handbook written by his brother-in-law, Patterson established the world's first sales training school on the grounds of the NCR factory campus (at Sugar Camp in Dayton, Ohio). He also coined a phrase for his service division which, until about the time the company was bought by AT&T, hung on the wall of every service department in the company. The phrase was, "We Cannot Afford To Have A Single Dissatisfied Customer".

Patterson attended Miami University, Oxford, Ohio and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1867.  He was something of a health fanatic, and adopted one regimen after another, most of which were required of his executives and employees.[citation needed] While at Miami, Patterson was a member of Beta Theta Pi.

In 1888 Patterson married Katharine Beck of Brookline, Massachusetts. They had two children: Frederick Beck Patterson and Dorothy Forster Patterson. Mrs. Patterson died of diphtheria in June, 1894 at the age of 28. His nephew, Lt Frank Patterson, was killed in 1918 when his military aircraft crashed near Dayton, Ohio. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was named in his memory.

Patterson lived in his Swiss chalet estate "The Far Hills" in Oakwood, Montgomery County, Ohio. Patterson loved the Adirondacks and built his summer estate on Beaver Lake, on the Beaver River east of Lowville, NY. His family built two other estates on the lake. All three estates still exist, two as church camps (Beaver Camp and Unirondack), one as private bed and breakfast.

He was a pioneer in sales and an industrialist most noted for being the founder of National Cash Register (N.C.R.). Patterson sought to create a method of sales management that encompassed all aspects of selling, from the calculation of quotas and commission rates to the motivate discouraged salesmen. The aspect of the Patterson method was the N.C.R. Primer introduced in 1879, which contained sales script instructions for agents and salesmen. In January 1894, N.C.R. produced a more formal sales manual that contained more techniques to help the businessman find ways to increase profit. Patterson's methods influenced United States business for a generation. It was estimated that one-sixth of United States business executives were former NCR executives (1910-30). In 1979, he was posthumously inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame.

Interment: Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio, PLOT Sec 13, Lot 2871