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1941–1944 · A BREAKTHROUGH OF PRODUCTION, STATED AS PRODUCTION
The distinction: The turbosupercharger — the exhaust-driven compressor that let aircraft engines keep their power in thin air — was a General Electric development of the company's eastern engineering works, and no honest Fort Wayne account claims its invention. What the record claims, and supports, is the making of it. When war came, the British government placed work on key fighter-aircraft components with GE in the United States, and Fort Wayne was chosen to produce the turbosupercharger; the United States government bought the Taylor Street land for a dedicated plant, and ground was broken on 6 December 1941, the day before Pearl Harbor. By 1944 the Taylor Street plant's output exceeded 50,000 units — in the Electric Works history's words, "the highest level of supercharger production of any factory in the country" — and GE's Fort Wayne employment passed 20,000, some 36 percent of the city's workforce. A popular modern account (Atlas Obscura) loosens this into the claim that the turbo-supercharger "found its first footing in the U.S. at the Electric Works"; the documented version needs no loosening. Invention is a patent and a date; a breakthrough can also be the moment a device exists in numbers that change an air war, and that moment, for this device, was Fort Wayne's.
Sources:
- Randi J. Lindquist, Quest Club paper on the Electric Works, 17 March 2023, citing R. E. Linkous, General Electric at Fort Wayne (1994) — the British placement, the Fort Wayne selection, the Taylor Street purchase, 6 December 1941, the 50,000 units by 1944 as the country's highest supercharger production, the 20,000 wartime workers.
- Atlas Obscura, "Electric Works, Fort Wayne" — the looser "first footing" form of the claim, corrected here to the documented production record.