The supplier web: the pumps Fort Wayne sold the world, and its axles

1885 – present

The gasoline pump is a Fort Wayne product: The automobile ran on fuel that had to be measured, and Fort Wayne built the machines that measured it. S. F. Bowser sold his first pump — a self-measuring pump for kerosene — in Fort Wayne on 5 September 1885, to grocery and hardware store owner Jake Gumper; the design was patented in October 1887, a hose attachment adapted it to gasoline from 1905, and the Bowser works on Creighton Avenue stood until its demolition in 2012. The word outlasted the plant: in parts of Europe and Australia a fuel pump is still a "bowser." The Wayne Oil Tank Company was founded in Fort Wayne in 1891 by former Bowser employees; it built about fifty self-measuring pumps in its first year, took a "Best Self Measuring Oil Pump" distinction at the 1893 Columbian Exposition, settled into the name Wayne Pump Company about 1928, produced the first computing pump — the Model 40 — in 1933 and the Wayne 60 of 1935, remembered as the "World's Most Beautiful Pump," and by industry estimates held about half the market by 1937; the line descends through Symington-Wayne (1958) and Dresser Wayne (1968) to today's Wayne Fueling Systems of Austin, Texas. With Bowser, Wayne, and the Tokheim company — whose own record stands with the Business and Technology sections — the American Oil & Gas Historical Society's verdict is that "the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, became the gas-pump manufacturing capital of the world." The filling stations counted in the streets entry above were, in large part, furnished by factories a few miles from them.

Axles: Salisbury, Spicer, Dana: The second documented supplier line is the axle. The Salisbury Wheel Company, maker of the Salisbury axle, was acquired by the Spicer company in 1919; when the Second World War made Salisbury's rugged axles the Jeep's standard fitting, demand outgrew the existing plants, and in 1945 Salisbury began building a new plant in Fort Wayne. The corporation took the name Dana in 1946, and the Fort Wayne operation — renamed the Spicer Axle Division in 1970 — printed "Fort Wayne, Indiana" on the Spicer service literature for decades. An industry participant's account records the succession of 1982 precisely: International Harvester had made the hypoid rear axles for its medium and heavy trucks at the Fort Wayne Works until the works closed, whereupon Dana bought the entire axle operation and built the International axles under the Spicer name. Dana's Fort Wayne plant works today, making light-vehicle ring-and-pinion gears and axles — in a 2026 plant tour, its staff describe it as the maker of all of Dana's light-vehicle ring and pinions, with employees whose service runs past forty years. The magnet wire that wound the motors of the whole industry — Dudlo, Essex, and Rea — is the Technology section's subject and is cross-referenced, not retold, here. No Fort Wayne battery maker or bearing maker was verified in the sources reached for this section, and none is claimed.

Sources:

1. American Oil & Gas Historical Society — the Bowser, Wayne, and Tokheim record and the "gas-pump manufacturing capital of the world" verdict; the Bowser sale of 5 September 1885 and the Creighton Avenue works.
2. Wayne Pump company history as carried in the petroliana record — the 1891 founding by former Bowser employees, the first year's fifty pumps, the 1893 Columbian Exposition distinction, the Model 40 computing pump of 1933, the Wayne 60 of 1935, the estimated half of the market by 1937, and the Symington-Wayne and Dresser Wayne successions.
3. Dana Corporation history, as summarised in the Salisbury heritage record and R&D case literature — the 1919 Spicer acquisition of Salisbury, the 1945 Fort Wayne plant for the Salisbury Axle division, the 1946 Dana renaming, and the 1970 Spicer Axle Division name; Dana's Spicer service manuals, printed Fort Wayne, Indiana.
4. Practical Machinist forum, a participant's 2007 account — Harvester's in-house axle production at the Fort Wayne Works to 1982 and Dana's purchase of the axle operation; 2026 plant-tour reporting — the Fort Wayne plant's present ring-and-pinion production.