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Precision gearing and defence electronics · Later Bowmar LLC
On the record
Founded: 1951, Fort Wayne, strong. Purdue MEP’s company history, the ACGSI places account, Hawfield and the Seventh Circuit’s findings in Dixon v. White all agree on 1951 and Fort Wayne. The court record anchors the start in testimony: in 1951 Edward A. White was employed by the Farnsworth-Capehart Radio and Television Company at Fort Wayne (entry 30) and “conceived the idea of organizing a corporation for the production of electronic, mechanical and electrical appliances” (327 F.2d 434, decided 28 January 1964) approaching proven for a 1951 incorporation, from a federal appellate opinion’s findings of fact.
Founders: Edward A. White and Joan White. Edward (a graduate engineer; formerly head of the electromechanical section of Farnsworth Television, per Hawfield) worked without a cash salary after incorporation; Joan — daughter of John M. Dixon, the later plaintiff — worked for a Fort Wayne newspaper for the household’s living expenses, did clerical work at Bowmar and “at times operated punch presses and lathes,” and the couple borrowed on their furniture and automobile to assist the company (court findings).
What it did: precision gearing and gear assemblies at the start (Purdue MEP); high-reliability electronic and electromechanical components for government and industrial — especially defence — work; and, for five years, consumer hand-held calculators.
Course: at first a one-employee operation in a barn loft at Smith Field; 30 employees by 1953; by 1957 expanded to the Bluffton Road site (Hawfield). In 1965 Bowmar acquired Acton Laboratories, Inc., forming Bowmar/ALI, Inc. In fall 1971 it introduced the Bowmar Brain — the 901B, an eight-digit, red-LED, rechargeable four-function hand-held calculator. Price at introduction is flagged, sources differ: $239.99 (contemporary trade-press account), $240 / $245 (later accounts), $249 (a New York Times obituary account) — no single price is printed as proven. Its “first” is put the way IEEE Spectrum puts it: generally regarded as the first calculator to use an LED display and the first to be pocket size, as that consensus claim, not as an absolute superlative; the primary chronology supports the narrower title, the first American-made pocket-sized calculator. Sales rose from $3 million in 1971 to $64 million in 1973 on calculators, and a 1974 industry report called Bowmar probably the largest hand-held calculator maker in the world; the Smithsonian’s object records agree on successful sales in 1972–1973, with assembly moved to Mexico in mid-1974.
Fate: calculator line bankrupt and ended 1975; the company survived on defence work and still operates in Fort Wayne as Bowmar LLC, with a bankruptcy-year variant flagged. A $20 million after-tax loss for fiscal 1974, some $35 million in defaulted loans, a $16 million New York Life suit filed 7 February 1975, and on 10 February 1975 Bowmar Instrument Corp. filed for Chapter XI protection; founder Edward White resigned as president and CEO the same announcement (Radio Electronics, May 1975 — contemporary trade press; the Smithsonian agrees). Later summaries that date the bankruptcy 1976 conflict with the contemporary trade press and the Smithsonian and are not followed. Thereafter Bowmar withdrew from the consumer market for government and industrial contracts. Offices moved to Phoenix in 1986 with the acquisition of White Technologies; in 1998 Bowmar Corporation merged with Electronic Designs, Inc. to become White Electronic Designs, the Fort Wayne facility becoming its Electromechanical Products Division; in 2010 Main Street Venture Funds acquired the Fort Wayne facility, renamed Bowmar LLC, which continues to operate in Fort Wayne making aerospace and defence mechanical, electronic and electromechanical products.
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- § 05 — business
Sources: John M. Dixon v. Edward A. White and Joan White, 327 F.2d 434 (7th Cir. 1964) — https://openjurist.org/327/f2d/434/dixon-v-a-white ; Purdue MEP, “Bowmar LLC” — https://mep.purdue.edu/client-successes/bowmar-llc/ ; News-Sentinel, Hawfield, 13 Dec 1993 — http://egen.fortwayne.com/ns/projects/history/haw16.php ; Radio Electronics, May 1975, via Old Calculator Museum — https://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/n-bowmarbankrupt.html ; Smithsonian, National Museum of American History — https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_1305728 ; IEEE Spectrum, Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame: Bowmar 901B — https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-consumer-electronics-hall-of-fame-bowmar-901b . Sources as cited in the profile.