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 printed rather than smoothed. No letters patent for the twentieth-century headline products was pinned in the pass that built this section; what stands is the company's own institutional timeline, and its claims are carried as the company's. That timeline dates the Type C split tapered bearing to 1923, the first Taper-Lock bushing to 1939 — the tapered, split bushing that became an industry standard for mounting sheaves, sprockets, and couplings on shafts — the first Type E bearing to 1943, and the entry into gearing with the first Torque-Arm shaft-mount reducer in 1949. Behind those stands the second great system of the founder's own era: the Dodge American System, the Continuous Wind system of rope transmission, which drove a factory's line shafts with endless manila ropes running in grooved sheaves. Howard's 1907 county history, in its biography of president Melvin W. Mix, gives the system its period measure: the Dodge company "revolutionized the mechanical world by the invention and introduction of the famous Dodge American or Continuous Wind System of rope transmission." The sentence is a booster biography's and is printed as such; the documented core inside it is that Dodge built the largest rope engine yet made for the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893 and that it powered the fair, on Discover Indiana's account — a Mishawaka firm driving the machinery of the White City.

Sources:

1. Dodge Industrial, the company's institutional history, as carried in the Businesses section of this history — the Type C split tapered bearing (1923), the first Taper-Lock bushing (1939), the first Type E bearing (1943), the Dodge School of Transmissioneering (1944), and the first Torque-Arm shaft-mount reducer (1949); the company's own claims, carried as such.
2. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), biography of Melvin W. Mix, as carried in the Businesses section — the Continuous Wind rope-transmission sentence, printed as the biography's claim; and Howard's product catalogue of the works.
3. Discover Indiana (Indiana Historical Society), "Dodge Manufacturing Company," as carried in the Businesses section — the largest rope engine yet made, built by Dodge for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, powering the fair.
4. Negative statement, in the text: no patent number for the Taper-Lock bushing, the Type E bearing, or the Torque-Arm reducer was pinned in the record reached for this section;.