Bendix in the world: licenses, brakes and wings

1913 — present

South Bend sold the rights, and then the parts: Bendix's foreign book ran on paper before it ran on freight. The invention record — carried in the Inventors section — shows the pattern from the start: Vincent Bendix licensed his starter drive to the Eclipse Machine Company of Elmira in 1913, and the drive, fitted first to Chevrolet's 1914 "Baby Grand," spread through the world's motor industry as a licensed device rather than a South Bend shipment; the French Perrot brake patents that Bendix acquired in 1923–24 were the same trade running the other way. The outbound licensing reached its formal height in 1934, when — in the words of the official history of Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems — "Bendix-Westinghouse takes automotive air brake worldwide by establishing licensing agreements with Westinghouse companies in France, Germany, Italy and England." Corporate stakes followed licenses: in 1963 the Bendix Corporation acquired a 51 percent interest in the Australian friction-materials maker that became Bendix's Ballarat operation, manufacturing there from 1955 as Mintex and under Bendix control thereafter.

The aviation side carried the name furthest. Bendix Aviation, formed in 1929 with its seat here, supplied the hydraulic systems, carburetors and instruments that the company's histories describe as standard across the Allied aircraft industry of the Second World War — the pressure carburetor, in those accounts, dominated its market — so that Bendix equipment flew out of South Bend inside other nations' airplanes as well as America's. The line's surviving South Bend works is the direct heir: Honeywell'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 — aircraft in service with air forces and airlines around the world — and employed 773 people here in 2016, on the Tribune's count. The corporation is carried in Businesses; the licenses' patent record in Inventors.

Sources:

1. Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems (Knorr-Bremse), official company history — Bendix-Westinghouse's 1934 licensing agreements with Westinghouse companies in France, Germany, Italy and England, taking the automotive air brake worldwide.
2. Bendix Australia, 70th-anniversary accounts (2025) — the Ballarat works founded as Mintex Limited in 1955; the Bendix Corporation's acquisition of a 51 percent stake in 1963.
3. Inventors & Inventions — the Eclipse license of 1913 and the Perrot acquisition of 1923–24, cross-referenced and not retold here.
4. Businesses — the Bendix Corporation in full, and Honeywell Aerospace's wheels-and-braking plant (manufacturing on the ground since 1943; product lines for the Boeing 737, B-52 and F-35; 773 employed in 2016 on the Tribune's count), cross-referenced and not retold here.