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Magnet wire · Dudlo Wire Co.
On the record
Founded: formed 1911; Fort Wayne factory opened 1912. The Quest Club industry history and the History Center give formation in 1911 by George Jacobs with William Mossman and his son B. Paul Mossman; the Jacobs biography adds an unsuccessful first year in Cleveland in 1911, then the move to Fort Wayne, where Dudlo opened in a 50-by-100-foot shed on Wall Street in 1912 with a dozen employees. Two other dates are rejected for founding: 1914 (a News-Sentinel magnet-wire history and a photo caption — no other support; misidentified for founding) and 1907 (the enamel-perfection year in the Jacobs biography, not a formation date). The name is documented: “Dud” from Dudley, Massachusetts, Jacobs’s birthplace, + “lo” / Ohio, for the firm’s first Ohio phase.
Founders: George A. Jacobs (1877–1945), inventor and founder — a chemist at GE’s Fort Wayne Works from 1901 who left for Sherwin-Williams in Cleveland in 1905 and perfected a chemical enamel wire insulation in his own time (the perfection year itself conflicts: 1907 in his biography vs 1911 in a 2024 Quest Club paper and the History Center — flagged, not established as to year); William E. Mossman, his father-in-law, who bankrolled the firm on condition the couple return to Fort Wayne; and B. Paul Mossman, William’s son — all documented. Ethel Mossman Jacobs’s experimental role is documented; her formal founder status is not established.
What it did: made magnet wire — copper and aluminium wire coated with a very thin enamel insulation, baked on in special ovens, replacing bulky cotton and fabric wrapping — for coils in motors, transformers, ignition coils, appliances, radios, telephones and automobiles. Its key early market was ignition coils for the Model T Ford and other automobiles; it also supplied GE, Westinghouse and Delco-Remy.
Course: Wall Street, Fort Wayne, from 1912; Dudlo began drawing its own wire in 1917. A contemporary Fort Wayne News and Sentinel headline of 30 August 1919 claimed “Twenty-Five Thousand Miles of Wire — Enameled Insulated Every Day” as a contemporary claim, not an audited output figure. A New Haven branch plant opened 17 March 1920. By 1922 Dudlo was the world’s leading manufacturer of magnet wire, operating around the clock; Leininger gives at least 35 million pounds of enameled wire for 1912–1927 and 105 major accounts, as Ford’s largest wire supplier. A claim that Dudlo “once employed 6,000” rests on a single News-Sentinel history and is not established — not printed as a peak figure. Dudlo made Fort Wayne the first of its magnet-wire firms, and the city took the unofficial title “Magnet Wire Capital of the World” as usage.
Fate: Dudlo itself ended in Fort Wayne in 1933 — and its successors are three separate lines, not one chain; the shorthand “Dudlo → Essex → Rea → Phelps Dodge” is not a corporate lineage and is not printed as one. (a) Corporate line: in 1927 Dudlo took part in a $50 million merger forming General Cable Corporation (the number of merging companies conflicts, so only “part of the 1927 merger” is asserted); General Cable closed Dudlo’s Fort Wayne offices in 1930 and moved the remaining Fort Wayne manufacturing to Rome, New York, in 1933. (b) Jacobs line: Jacobs left General Cable in 1928 or 1929 — CONFLICT flagged — and founded Inca Manufacturing in Fort Wayne (entry 24). (c) People and plant lines: Victor Rea, with Dudlo almost from the start, resigned in 1933 and formed Rea Magnet Wire (entry 26); Essex Wire, founded in Detroit in 1930 (not a Dudlo spin-off), bought the vacant former Dudlo plant in 1936 (entry 27).
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- § 05 — business
Sources: Quest Club industry history (Steiner) — https://www.barrettlaw.com/history-trends-in-industry-allen-county ; ACGSI / Allen INGenWeb, Dudlo page — https://www.acgsi.org/genweb/fort-wayne/dudlo-company-fort-wayne-indiana.html ; Leininger, News-Sentinel, 12 Dec 1981 — http://egen.fortwayne.com/ns/projects/history/scapes21.php ; Frazier, News-Sentinel — http://egen.fortwayne.com/ns/projects/history/2000/1910/ind6.php ; Castaldi, History Center, 10 Oct 2013 — https://historycenterfw.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-magnet-wire-capital-of-world.html ; Rea Magnet Wire, official history timeline — https://www.reawire.com/about/rea/ ; Superior Essex company history — https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/85/Superior-Essex-Inc.html . Sources as cited in the profile.