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 for on 3 April 1878 and granted on 15 October 1878 — and its face reads "Miles D. Williams and Wallace H. Dodge, of Mishawaka, Ind." The received telling, from the Indiana Historical Bureau's marker line of descent through Discover Indiana's account, gives the invention to Wallace Dodge alone: "Mishawaka-born Wallace Harlow Dodge earned his reputation as an inventor when he patented the Magic Jack in 1878, which became the leading jack for performing wagon maintenance." The "leading jack" judgment is Discover Indiana's and is printed as its claim; the patent itself is joint, and it is printed here as joint. Who Miles D. Williams was beyond the patent's face — what share of the device was his, and why his name fell out of the telling — is not established in the record reached for this section, and the gap is named rather than filled. What the record does show is the sequence: the jack patent of October 1878, and in that same year the founding of the Dodge Manufacturing Company to make the jacks — the company's own institutional history, kept today by Dodge Industrial, begins on the same line: "1878 — Wallace Dodge founded Dodge Manufacturing Co. to produce Magic Wagon Jacks." The "Magic" was the trade name the company sold the jack under; the patent's own title is the plainer "Improvement in Wagon-Jacks." A jack for raising a wagon to get its wheel off was a crowded art in the 1870s — the patent indexes of the decade are thick with wagon-jack grants to men of other towns — and this section claims for the Williams and Dodge jack no priority over the art. What it earned, on the record, was a company: within two years the firm was incorporated, on the Union Street ground within four, and holding, in the next entry, a patent worth fighting the whole pulley trade over.

Sources:

1. United States Patent Office, Letters Patent No. 208,940, "Improvement in Wagon-Jacks," application filed 3 April 1878, patented 15 October 1878 — the patent document itself, via the Patent Office images: "Miles D. Williams and Wallace H. Dodge, of Mishawaka, Ind."
2. Discover Indiana (Indiana Historical Society), "Dodge Manufacturing Company" — the Magic Jack patented in 1878 and "the leading jack for performing wagon maintenance," printed as that account's claim; Wallace Harlow Dodge as Mishawaka-born.
3. Indiana Historical Bureau, Dodge Manufacturing Company marker (erected 1999) — "Wallace Dodge founded company here, 1878 — manufactured 'Magic Wagon Jacks' and wood pulleys," as carried in the Businesses section of this history.
4. Dodge Industrial, the company's institutional history, as carried in the Businesses section — "1878 — Wallace Dodge founded Dodge Manufacturing Co. to produce Magic Wagon Jacks."