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Inventors & Inventions · The Patent Record
Mishawaka's inventive record is smaller than its twin city's, and this section prints it at its true size rather than inflating it to a match. What the record holds is nevertheless remarkable for a city of its scale: two foundational patents of the power-transmission art, each tested in the federal courts; a windmill patent of 1869 that watered the plains; a seamless knitted boot that turned a family woolen mill into a national name; the foundational patent of airless blast cleaning, filed from this city in 1934; and a war record of engineering under deadline that needs no invention claims to stand. Behind the firms stands a second, quieter ledger — the Mishawaka-born who invented elsewhere: a drummer who changed what every drum in the world is skinned with, and a steel guitarist who rebuilt his instrument's machinery, both working in other states, both printed here at boundary size with the geography stated plainly. One pattern deserves stating before the entries begin, because the patent faces insist on it: every one of this city's three foundational patents names two inventors. The wagon-jack patent of 1878 is Williams and Dodge. The split-pulley patent of 1882 is Dodge and Philion. The boot patent of 1887 is Beiger and Eberhart. The popular telling of the first two gives them to Dodge alone; this section prints the second names back in. Where the record gives a patent number, the number is printed. Where an innovation is documented but no patent for it was reached, the entry says so in plain words. Where a famous local claim fails — a Humvee designed in Mishawaka, a foam rubber born on the river — the claim is printed with the record that corrects it.
Palmer C. Perkins and the windmill: the patent of 10 August 1869
1869–1872 · A NEW YORKER'S PATENT, MADE IN MISHAWAKA
The patent: The first great Mishawaka patent belongs to a man who was not born here, and the geography is printed as the record gives it: Palmer C. Perkins was a New Yorker who had learned blacksmithing and ax making, bought the…
The Magic Jack: Williams and Dodge, and the patent of 15 October 1878
1878 · THE FOUNDING PATENT, WITH ITS SECOND NAME RESTORED
The patent's face: The document on which Mishawaka's largest industry was founded names two inventors, and the second of them has been dropped from the story. Letters Patent No. 208,940, "Improvement in Wagon-Jacks," was applied…
The split pulley: Dodge and Philion, the patent of 4 July 1882, and the pulley wars
1882–1899 · THE FOUNDATIONAL PATENT, AND WHAT THE COURTS DID WITH IT
The patent: Four years after the jack, the same works produced the invention that built the fortune, and again the patent names two men. Letters Patent No. 260,462, granted 4 July 1882 to Wallace H. Dodge and George Philion …
The seamless knitted boot: Beiger and Eberhart, and the patent of 26 July 1887
1886–1887 · THE BOOT THAT MADE BALL BAND
The patent: The woolen side of the city's record holds one great patent, and this one the popular telling has always shared. Letters Patent No. 367,333, "Seamless Knitted Boot or Shoe," was applied for on 26 February 1887 and…
The Dodge line after the founder: the rope drive, the Taper-Lock, and the Torque-Arm
1893–1949 · COMPANY FIRSTS, CARRIED AT THE COMPANY'S STRENGTH
The honest entry: Wallace Dodge died in 1894, and the works he founded kept inventing for half a century — but the later record reaches this section at a different strength from the first two entries, and the difference is…
The Wheelabrator: Minich's abrasive-throwing machine, patented from Mishawaka
1932–1939 · THE AIRLESS BLAST WHEEL, AND A PRIORITY QUESTION PRINTED WHOLE
The patent: The twentieth century's one indisputable Mishawaka patent of the first rank belongs to the foundry-equipment works on the city's east side, and its face is a Mishawaka document. Letters Patent No. 2,077,637, "Abrasive…
The rubber works' materials: Koylon, the fuel cells, and claims that belong to the parent
1929–1962 · MANUFACTURE IN MISHAWAKA, INVENTION ELSEWHERE — PRINTED AS SUCH
The tested claims: The Ball Band works made famous materials for sixty years, and local telling sometimes lets the making blur into inventing. This entry separates them, because the record does. Foam rubber — the material the…
Buddy Emmons: born here, and the pedal steel rebuilt in Tennessee
1956–1969 · THE BORN-HERE LEDGER, FIRST ENTRY
The geography: The most consequential musical inventor born in Mishawaka did his inventing in Nashville, and this entry is the boundary kind, printed at the size the tie earns. Buddy Emmons was born in Mishawaka in 1937; the…
Remo Belli: the Weather King head, and what "first" the record allows
1955–1960 · BORN AND RAISED HERE; THE INVENTION IS CALIFORNIA WORK
The formation and the claim: Remo Delmo Belli was born in Mishawaka on 22 June 1927 and grew up here — "I grew up in Mishawaka, Indiana," he told Modern Drummer weeks before his death — took up the drums at twelve in the city's…
The Humvee: a claim tested — designed by AM General, built in Mishawaka
1979–1985 · THE DESIGNING WAS THE COMPANY'S OWN; THE ROOM WAS NOT HERE
The claim and the record: No vehicle is more completely Mishawaka's in the world's mind than the Humvee, and the claim in its strong form — that the Humvee was designed or invented in Mishawaka — is the one this entry tests. The…
Donald Heirman: standardization is not invention, printed exactly
1940–2020 · THE DISTINCTION THIS LEG OWES THE RECORD
The distinction: One Mishawaka name stands in the People and Halls of Fame legs at the highest honor size this build gives, and this section's duty to him is a distinction, not a claim. Donald Nestor Heirman, born in Mishawaka on…
The lone inventors and the empty chairs: the record at its true size
1838–2026 · WHAT THE PATENT FILES DO NOT HOLD FOR THIS CITY
The honest close: Every other entry in this section is a firm or a famous name, and the discipline of the leg requires a closing entry for the rest of the city's inventive population — printed at the size the record gives it.…
The banked file supposed that Ball Band's inventive output ran through the parent company's laboratories, an inference drawn from the parent's very real foam-rubber program and from the silence of the secondary record. The Patent Office's own lists say otherwise. The Mishawaka works held a patent practice of its own: its officers, chemists, last-makers, and mold men patented in the company's own name from 1907 into the 1950s, and when the direct-to-parent channel opened in 1941, the men who used it were printed as residents of Mishawaka, working on the plant's own subjects — sponge rubber, fuel tanks, latex foam, footwear machinery. The works was not a pair of hands for other men's inventions. It was an inventor, corporately and personally, for most of a century, and this section prints the roster at its true size: the prolific men with their counts and arcs, the one-patent names at line size, the blank years as blank, and the sweep's own limits stated at the end, with the sources that would settle what this history could not.
How the search was made, and what its classes mean
1898–1997 · THE METHOD, PRINTED BEFORE THE ROSTER
The sources: The sweep was worked from the Patent Office's own annual lists of patentees — the patentee lists in the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents for 1898–1919 and the Index of Patents Issued from the United…
The first generation: Warner's rubber patents and Price's chemistry, 1898–1919
1898–1919 · THE WOOLEN-NAME YEARS
The felt-boot paper the sweep opens with: The window opens on the felt trade the woolen company grew from. The 1898 patentee list carries Edward Roos assigning a "Wool boot" patent to the Beatty Felting Company of Mishawaka — the…
Charles E. Bradley: the works' engineer, 1917–1942
1917–1942 · CLASS 1 THROUGHOUT
The arc: The first patentee the renamed company kept is Charles E. Bradley, and his paper is the Story of Mishawaka section of the works' own practice. It opens with process: No. 1,240,931, "Form for rubber articles," of 25…
George W. Blair: the works' most prolific patentee
1925–1950 · DESIGNS, FASTENERS, FLOOR COVERINGS, SPONGE RUBBER
The count: No name stands on the Mishawaka works' paper more often than George W. Blair's. The lists and the verified records give him, alone or with partners, forty-nine grants between 1925 and 1954 — footwear designs, the…
The slide-fastener campaign, 1928–1931: the works takes on the zipper
1928–1931 · CLASS 1 · THE FASTENER PATENTS AT FULL SIZE
The campaign: The densest single subject in the works' whole patent record is not a boot. It is the slide fastener — the zipper — and between the autumn of 1928 and the end of 1931 the Mishawaka company took out fastener paper at…
The boot men: Ferrettie, Van Dinter, and the form-fitting boot
1925–1949 · CLASS 1 · THE FOOTWEAR BENCH BESIDE BLAIR
Conrad Ferrettie: The second name on the footwear bench is Conrad Ferrettie's. His grants to the Mishawaka company run: Design No. 73,974, "Overshoe," of 29 November 1927; Design No. 79,289, "Overshoe," 1929; No. 1,701,773…
The works' paper in the 1930s: Schott, the Bodles, and the machinery men
1931–1942 · CLASS 1 · PAST THE FASTENERS
John F. Schott: Blair's partner on the floor coverings holds his own line beside them: No. 2,129,607, "Method of making rubber articles," of 6 September 1938, and No. 2,295,363, "Pillow," of 8 September 1942 — a foam pillow…
The cushion line: Marion M. Cunningham and the seating program, 1937–1949
1937–1949 · CLASS 1 · A SOUTH BEND RESIDENCE, PRINTED AS PRINTED
The man: The works' second great product line after footwear — rubber seating — has one presiding patentee, and he is not a Mishawaka resident in any record the search read. Marion Morgan Cunningham is printed of South Bend on…
The sponge-rubber war program, 1942–1953: two paper channels at once
1942–1953 · CLASSES 1 AND 2 SIDE BY SIDE · THE FOAM YEARS
The finding: The war years are the peak of the works' patent record, and they break the banked file's foam story open. The lists now add the missing middle term: from 1942 the Mishawaka works' own men patented the making of…
The parent channel's bench: chemists, tank men, and the testing laboratory
1943–1954 · CLASS 2 · MISHAWAKA RESIDENTS ON THE PARENT'S PAPER
The chemists: Beside the sponge bench, the parent channel carried a Mishawaka chemistry staff whose subjects are the synthetic-rubber age itself. Ernest G. Bargmeyer of Mishawaka — who stands first on the works' own…
Annex: the Clark last company, the felt and regenerating houses, and what the search saw and excluded
1910–1942 · ANNEX FIRMS AT THEIR OWN STRENGTH · EXCLUSIONS STATED
The George C. Clark Metal Last Company: The works did not make its own lasts, and the firm that did was itself a Mishawaka patentee, carried here as the roster's annex head. George C. Clark's molding apparatus, Nos. 1,210,420 and…
The tail: Doherty, the shortened name, and the end of the works' paper, 1950–1963
1950–1963 · THE LISTS GO QUIET · PRINTED AT TRUE SIZE
The thinning: After 1950 the works' paper thins to a thread, and the thread is footwear. The subsidiary's grants of the decade are Cecil H. Fitterling of South Bend, "Making closure flap structures," of 4 September 1951; Lucian…
The Patent Roster, Counted by Class and by Name
1898–1963 · THE COUNTS, WITH THEIR SEAMS SHOWING
The totals: The sweep holds 216 grants itemized in the entries above, in three classes, beside an annex of six that are not counted as the works' paper. Class 1, the works' own paper — assignee the Mishawaka Woolen Manufacturing…
Inventors & Inventions: Open Questions
1898–1997 · EVERY GAP WITH ITS SETTLING SOURCE
The 1926 volume: The Index of Patents Issued for 1926 was not found in any collection — the Archive's 1926 commissioner volume is the administrative report, not the patentee index — so the works' 1926 paper rests on the years…
Medicine, Kept Modest — Because the Record Holds Almost None
For Mishawaka the evidence is a near-perfect blank, and this entry prints it at exactly that size. The patent sweep that built this section — 216 grants itemized in the inventors files, with the six-grant annex — was read for the…
Black Inventors: The Searched Negative
The patent record hides inventors whose names it never describes, and the checklist orders the search made anyway, by name, and the result printed honestly. The search ran thus: every name the build's Black-history record holds…
Women Inventors: Named in Their Own Right, or Not at All
The checklist names its exemplars — Alice Hamilton, who founded a field; Gertrude Muller of the child-safety line; Ethel Mossman Jacobs, co-inventor — and all three are Fort Wayne's, boundary-printed in one line as the form's…
The Present Research City, as of November 2026
The leg closes on the living research city, and Mishawaka's prints at its true, smaller size. The checklist's form is a standing research institution — the Mirro Center pattern, a named center with its own research program — and…