Fort Wayne Metals: from recording wire to medical wire

1946 — the medical company, 1970

The strand that held a heartbeat: Fort Wayne's largest medical advancement began as a wire shop. Ardelle Glaze founded Fort Wayne Metals in 1946 to make magnetic recording wire — the founder's life and his first company, which by his son Scott's account made eighty percent of the recording wire used in America before tape displaced it, are the Founders & CEOs record's, cross-referenced here. The medical story starts with an invention of the 1960s: Glaze developed and patented the drawn brazed strand, DBS®, a strand construction that answered the fracturing that plagued the wires carrying signals to the heart — the company, whose word it is, says the drawn brazed strand "revolutionized leads." When his investors sold the first company in 1968 and the Waynedale plant closed, Glaze followed the medical market he had seen coming: in 1970 — the date is 1971 in the family's account carried in Founders & CEOs, and both stand — at sixty-one, he founded Fort Wayne Metals Research Products Corporation, beginning, in the company's own history, with five wire-drawing machines and one furnace. The inventive record and the patents around the strand are the Inventors record's, cross-referenced here in one line. What the new company made was wire for medicine from the start: wire and strand for catheters and guide wires, for pacing leads, and for the orthopedic and orthodontic trades — the fine, fatigue-resistant, exactly-specified metal without which the minimally invasive era could not have been built. His son Scott Glaze, with the company from its 1971 beginning, became its president in 1985 and leads it still. The company profile — its plants, employment and ownership — is the Business record's; what follows here is the medical contribution itself.

Sources:

1. Fort Wayne Metals, company history — the 1946 founding for recording wire; the drawn brazed strand (DBS®) developed and first patented in the 1960s, in the company's words "revolutionized leads"; Fort Wayne Metals Research Products Corp beginning in 1970 "with only five wire drawing machines and one furnace."
2. Founders & CEOs section of this history — Glaze's life, the recording-wire company and its eighty-percent share by his son's account, the 1968 sale, and the medical refounding dated 1971 at age sixty-one; the two founding years carried in the entry as given.
3. The Waynedale News (26 January 2005) — Scott Glaze's account of the 1971 beginning, and the product line as it stood in 2005: wire for catheters, guide wires, pacing and ICD leads, orthopedic devices and orthodontic appliances, in nitinol, titanium and other special alloys.
4. Inventors section of this history — the drawn brazed strand and the patent record, cross-referenced in one line.