The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Chemist · Founder of Dudlo, 1911
On the record
An ex-GE chemist who founded Dudlo in 1911. Through Dudlo, Fort Wayne became the world’s leading magnet-wire producer — the factual root of “Magnet Wire Capital of the World” (§ 05).
George A. Jacobs (1877–1945) was born at Dudley, Massachusetts, and trained at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He came to General Electric's Fort Wayne works as a chemist in 1901, where he met Ethel Mossman, daughter of the Fort Wayne hardware merchant William Mossman; in 1905 he moved to Sherwin-Williams in Cleveland, and in a home laboratory, with Ethel testing solutions, he perfected by 1907 the enamel insulation that made modern magnet wire possible. He married Ethel, and in 1911 the couple formed the Dudlo Manufacturing Company with William Mossman and B. Paul Mossman — the name joined Dudley and Ohio — financed by Mossman on the condition that the company come home to Fort Wayne. The Wall Street factory opened in 1912 with about a dozen employees (some accounts date the plant 1914). Dudlo began drawing its own copper wire in 1917 and by 1922 was the largest magnet-wire maker in the world. Jacobs sold Dudlo to General Cable in 1927, left in 1929, and founded Inca Manufacturing, which he sold to Phelps Dodge; his protégé Victor Rea carried the trade into Rea Magnet Wire. Fort Wayne's "Magnet Wire Capital" century begins with Jacobs's enamel.
Find them on this page
- § 02 — the Story of Fort Wayne section
- § 05 — business
From the timeline in § 02 and § 05; Wikipedia, "George Jacobs (inventor)"; News-Sentinel company histories (egen.fortwayne.com); Bates & Keller, History of the Dudlo Manufacturing Company (1965), Allen County Public Library.