Bendix — the starter drive, the brakes, and what remains

South Bend from 1919 – the name dissolved 1983

Vincent Bendix and the drive: Vincent Hugo Bendix was born 12 August 1882 in Moline, Illinois, the son of a Swedish Methodist minister. Working in New York, in a rented room over a horse stable, he built an unsuccessful motorized bicycle, then a gas-appliance venture that ended in bankruptcy, before developing the device that made him: the Bendix drive, a mechanical link that let an electric motor spin a car's engine to life and then disengaged itself — the working heart of the electric self-starter. The mechanism worked in 1910; the patent application was filed 2 May 1914; and the drive was first production-embodied in the starter Bendix licensed to the Eclipse Machine Company of Elmira, New York, fitted to the 1914 Chevrolet "Baby Grand." By 1919, in his own company's count, 1.5 million Bendix drive units were in use, and "Bendix drive" had become the generic name for the thing it did.

South Bend becomes the seat: By the middle 1920s, on the company-history record, practically every automobile maker in the world was starting its engines with a Bendix drive. In 1919 Bendix bought the Winkler-Grimm wagon plant in South Bend for experimental work — the seed ground of the entry above. His father's death in a 1922 automobile accident, blamed on inadequate brakes, turned him to the brake problem: he licensed Henri Perrot's French patents for four-wheel brakes, formed the Perrot Brake Company in South Bend in November 1923, and reorganized and renamed the whole as the Bendix Corporation in 1924, making its first public stock offering and building its first plant at 401 North Bendix Drive. The numbers ran hot: 650,000 brake sets shipped in 1926, 3.6 million in 1928 — about 25 percent of the available market that year, on the pioneer profile's account. Bendix Aviation Corporation was incorporated on 13 April 1929 to hold Bendix's aviation interests — the Eclipse starters Bendix had acquired control of in 1928, and the Stromberg Carburetor Company, bought in 1929 and moved from Chicago into South Bend in April 1930. The airport on the city's northwest side, begun as Bendix Field in 1929, is carried in the Airports leg; the Bendix Trophy air race, first flown in 1931, carries the name still.

1936: the first auto sit-down: In November 1936 about 1,000 workers at the South Bend Bendix plant stopped work and sat down inside the plant — the first sit-down strike in a U.S. automobile plant, a month before Flint. Eight days later the company recognized the new United Auto Workers' Local 9. The strike is carried in the labor record at its full size; it stands here as the company's defining event in this city.

The empire leaves, the brakes stay: Under Ernest Breech, president from 1942, the corporation's sales reached $900 million in 1944 with a peak corporate employment of 70,000 — corporate figures, not South Bend's, and printed as such. Headquarters had moved from South Bend to Detroit's Fisher Building in the 1940s and went on to Southfield, Michigan, in May 1969. Bendix put the first anti-lock braking system on an American production car, the 1971 Chrysler Imperial. The Bendix Corporation itself ceased to exist in 1983, acquired and dissolved by the Allied Corporation; Allied became AlliedSignal, which merged with Honeywell in 1999 and took the Honeywell name. What remains in South Bend is the work, not the name: Honeywell Aerospace's wheels-and-braking plant, on ground where aircraft wheel and brake manufacturing has run since 1943 on Honeywell's own materials, makes wheels and brakes for the Boeing 737, the B-52, and the F-35, and employed 773 people here in 2016, on the Tribune's count. In May of that year the company locked out 320 members of UAW Local 9; the lockout ran ten months and ended with ratification, 151 to 104, in March 2017 and a return to work on 13 March, pensions frozen under the new five-year contract. Bendix's second and larger plant, built in 1951, stands in Mishawaka and is printed as a boundary in the closing entry.

Sources:

1. Encyclopedia.com (International Directory of Company Histories), "Bendix Corporation" — the 1919 purchase of the Winkler-Grimm Wagon Company plant; the 1924 incorporation and first public offering; the Eclipse control (1928), the Bendix Aviation incorporation of 13 April 1929 and the Stromberg acquisition; headquarters to Detroit and to Southfield in May 1969; the 1944 corporate sales of $900 million and peak corporate employment of 70,000; the 1983 Allied acquisition and dissolution; the 1951 second plant in Mishawaka.
2. FreightWaves / Barchart, "FreightWaves Classics: Vincent Bendix" — born 12 August 1882 at Moline; the drive perfected in 1910, patent filed 2 May 1914, licensed to Eclipse; the 1914 Chevrolet "Baby Grand"; 1.5 million drive units by 1919; the 1922 death of his father and the Perrot brake patents; brake-set shipments of 650,000 in 1926 and 3,600,000 in 1928 at about 25 percent of the market.
3. Studebaker–Bendix Heritage Trail materials — the first Bendix plant at 401 North Bendix Drive; Bendix Field begun 1929; the Bendix Trophy; anti-lock braking introduced on the 1971 Chrysler Imperial.
4. Honeywell Aerospace, wheels-and-braking directory brochure — manufacturing at the South Bend main facility since 1943; product lines for the Boeing 737, B-52, and F-35 programs; a second Honeywell site in Mishawaka.
5. Labor Notes, "800 Honeywell Workers Return to Work After Ten-Month Lockout," with the South Bend Tribune's coverage via insurance-news aggregations — 320 locked out on 9 May 2016; the lockout's end, ratification 151–104, and the return to work 13 March 2017; 773 employed at the plant in 2016.