Fort Wayne invented the refrigerator, in 1913.

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INDUSTRY

Wrong inventor, wrong year, right factory. The first GE home refrigerators (sold 1911, ~$1,000) were built in Fort Wayne from the patented design of French Cistercian physicist Abbé Marcel Audiffren (French patent 1894; U.S. patents 1895/1908). GE manufactured Audiffren machines here 1911–1928; the Monitor-Top of 1927 made the home refrigerator common. Fort Wayne's true claim is the first American manufacture of a practical domestic electric refrigerator, and the “1913” in city-summary lists looks like a rounding of the 1911–13 production start.

Sources: Assembly Magazine, GE appliance centenary, assemblymag.com; GE photo record, Google Arts & Culture

There is a second Fort Wayne thread inside the legend, and it explains the date. The standard refrigerator histories credit Fred W. Wolf of Fort Wayne with the first home electric refrigerator of 1913 — the DOMELRE (DOMEstic ELectric REfrigerator), a unit mounted on top of an icebox, priced around $900 to $1,000. So “1913” is a real Fort Wayne refrigerator date; it belongs to Wolf's machine, and in the telling it migrated to the better-known factory across town. The field the two Fort Wayne claims competed in: Nathaniel B. Wales's Detroit unit of 1914 became Kelvinator, which by 1923 held some 80 percent of the market, and Alfred Mellowes's self-contained design of 1916 was bought by Frigidaire in 1918 for mass production. GE's own Fort Wayne line, on the Appliance Park history, built Audiffren machines at the Winter Street plant from 1911 to 1928, before the Monitor-Top of 1927 made the appliance common.

Added sources: refrigerator histories (historyofrefrigeration.com; fridge.com); A Walk in the Park: The History of Appliance Park, as quoted

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