Wire for the world: the magnet-wire cluster and the die maker

1911 — present

Fort Wayne's wire went out by the trainload; the tools that made wire followed: The electrical trade made Fort Wayne a wire city — Dudlo's magnet-wire works from 1911, then Rea, Phelps Dodge and Essex — and wire is an export good by nature: it ships anywhere copper is wound. When Magnavox moved its manufacturing to Fort Wayne in 1931, Indianapolis Monthly's history gives the reason in one clause: the company wanted to be near "the city that produced two-thirds of the country's supply of the copper wiring" its products required — a magazine's figure, printed here as the magazine's, but the fact beneath it, that Fort Wayne's wire cluster supplied a national and then a world market, is the trade record of the firms themselves, told in the Business section. The sharpest documented case is the cluster's toolmaker. Fort Wayne Wire Die, founded in 1937 to make precision single-crystal diamond wire-drawing dies, built its outward trade office by office: a European sales subsidiary, Fortek GmbH, opened in Germany on 1 April 1979 and grew from Western Europe into the Middle East and Northern Africa; a Philippine plant opened in 2001 to serve Asian markets; a Shanghai sales office in 2003; further plants in Canada, North Carolina and (in 2021) Mexico. A 2015 Fort Wayne Business Weekly survey of the magnet-wire industry states the resulting shape plainly: the company employs about 150 at its Fort Wayne plant and headquarters, its dies — the tools that draw copper rod down to wire — sell through its own offices in Europe, the Philippines and China and through agents and distributors around the world, and its name travels so literally that customs records abroad list "Fort Wayne" as a brand on diamond drawing dies moving between third countries. Rea Magnet Wire, headquartered at 3600 East Pontiac Street, is described in the same survey as the world's largest magnet wire producer, with seven plants in North America and seven in China — the Fort Wayne wire trade no longer merely shipping out, but planted abroad.

Sources:

1. Indianapolis Monthly, "How the World's First Home Gaming System Was Made in Indiana" — Magnavox's 1931 move and the "two-thirds of the country's supply of the copper wiring" figure, carried here as the magazine's.
2. Fort Wayne Business Weekly, "Magnet wire industry success boosts local economy" (10 July 2015), via Rea Magnet Wire — Fort Wayne Wire Die's Fort Wayne employment and plants, Rea as the world's largest magnet wire producer with seven North American and seven Chinese plants.
3. International Wire & Machinery Association exhibitor record, Fortek — the Fort Wayne Wire Die European subsidiary opened 1 April 1979 and its expansion into the Middle East and Northern Africa.
4. Fort Wayne Wire Die company record (Wire & Cable / ExpoMetals profiles) — the 1937 founding, the Philippine plant of 2001, the Shanghai office of 2003, and sales "through a network of independent agents and distributors around the world."
5. Businesses — Dudlo, Rea, Phelps Dodge and Essex in full, cross-referenced and not retold here.