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James W. Miller, pumps, 1916 · Appliance / radio manufacture test
Lead: The town produced no washing machines, no radios, and no branded appliance line. Its one candidate for a consumer-technology maker, tested at its documented size, is a single directory line.
The 1916–17 Polk Gazetteer entry for New Carlisle ends its business roll with “Miller James W, pumps.” That is the whole of the indexed record found for James W. Miller's pump works: one tradesman listing, in a town of 650, in the same entry that lists the New Carlisle Milling Co. Pumps in 1916 were consumer and farm goods — hand and windmill pumps were household technology — so Miller qualifies as the possible local equivalent the row asks to test. But the listing documents a trade, not a works: no factory, no brand name, no catalog, no workforce figure, and no second directory sighting was found in the searches run. Printed at true size, Miller is a pump man — dealer, maker, or repairer, the directory does not say — and any larger telling would be invention.
Beyond Miller, the test was run for an appliance maker seated in the town (washing-machine, radio, phonograph, or pump manufacture at works scale) across directory and press-index searches. The nearest real appliance manufacture carrying a name associated with this ground is Bendix Home Appliances of South Bend — the Bendix-named washing machine, from 1936 — which is South Bend's record and is boundary here (see the boundary pointer). Result: searched negative at works scale, instruments named (Polk gazetteers 1916–17 as transcribed; web press and company-history indexes); one documented tradesman listing, Miller, at its true size.
Sources:
- R. L. Polk & Co., Indiana Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1916–1917, New Carlisle entry — “Miller James W, pumps.” Via LDS Genealogy transcription.
- Bendix Corporation histories — Bendix Home Appliances, South Bend, name licensed 1936; washing machines under the Bendix name made by that company. Boundary only.