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Magnet wire · Rea Magnet Wire Corporation
On the record
Founded: 1933, Fort Wayne, strong. Rea’s own history timeline, the News-Sentinel, the Copper Development Association and the company’s reference summary all agree: Victor Rea formed Rea Magnet Wire in 1933. No incorporation record was retrieved, so the year is not proven. Rea’s own wording carries its founding distinction: it “becomes the first independent producer of enameled wire in the country” (official timeline) as the company’s claim, corroborated in substance by the CDA’s 2025 welcome.
Founder: Victor Rea. With Dudlo almost from the start; named Dudlo Works Manager in 1929 (Rea timeline — the News-Sentinel / Jacobs chains call him Dudlo president from 1928; role-title conflict flagged, not resolved). He resigned from General Cable in 1933, shortly before Dudlo’s Fort Wayne production was moved to Rome, New York, and formed Rea with several former Dudlo employees — the Jacobs chain specifies three co-workers; the number is carried as secondary detail. He leased the Woodward Engineering Building in Fort Wayne for the first plant (official timeline).
What it did: magnet wire — copper, aluminium and brass insulated magnet wire and bare and specialty wire for motors, transformers and coils. First order: Jefferson Electric started the company rolling (company summary chain), single-chain; the official timeline does not name it.
Course: a 1935 production milestone — 10,000 pounds of Single-B Silk enameled wire on three-inch spools (official timeline); continuous operation through World War II in support of the war effort. Victor Rea died of a heart attack in 1954; his son Samuel Rea became president the same year. First plant outside Fort Wayne: Lafayette, Indiana, 1959; second Fort Wayne facility at Adams Center Road, 1962 (closed in the 1993 streamlining). Sales reached a record $100 million in 1984. Later Fort Wayne headquarters address in hand: 3600 E. Pontiac Street.
Fate: still operating, headquartered in Fort Wayne. Ownership chain, kept distinct from survival: purchased by Alcoa on 18 January 1960 (the summary gives the exact day — carried as documented), ending the Rea family’s tenure; bought back from Alcoa in 1985 by president Jim Vann with Bill Gorman, Ron Foster and Bill Wyatt, and held privately thereafter; purchased Phelps Dodge Magnet Wire North America on 14 February 2006, with plants in Fort Wayne and Monterrey, Mexico — thereby absorbing the Inca lineage of entry 24; acquired by Elektrisola (privately held, Germany) in 2023. Rea states it currently employs over 900 people worldwide.
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- § 05 — business
Sources: Rea Magnet Wire, official history timeline — https://www.reawire.com/about/rea/ ; Rea Magnet Wire company summary — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rea_Magnet_Wire ; Copper Development Association, 2025 — https://copper.org/copper-development-association-welcomes-rea-magnet-wire-company-inc-as-new-member/ ; Frazier, News-Sentinel — http://egen.fortwayne.com/ns/projects/history/2000/1910/ind6.php ; Fort Wayne Business Weekly, 10 July 2015 — https://www.reawire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/FWBusiness_MagnetWire.pdf . Sources as cited in the profile.