Vincent Bendix — the founder who lost his company

born Moline, Illinois, 12 August 1882 · the Bendix Corporation from 1924

The founding, placed exactly: 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, the self-engaging 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 patent is a Chicago patent, "of Chicago" on its face: South Bend is the corporation's seat from 1924, not the patent's home, a distinction the Inventors section prints plainly. "Bendix invented the electric starter" does not survive the record — Kettering's Delco holds the starter; Bendix invented the drive that made it practical. By 1919, in his own company's count, 1.5 million Bendix drive units were in use, most of them built by licensees, the Eclipse Machine Company of Elmira first among them: the drive was Bendix's; the empire was assembled from licenses, acquisitions and other men's factories.

The seat, and the loss: In 1919 Bendix bought the Winkler-Grimm wagon plant in South Bend for experimental work — the seed ground of his empire in this city. 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, formed the Perrot Brake Company in South Bend in November 1923, and reorganized and renamed the whole as the Bendix Corporation in 1924, building its first plant at 401 North Bendix Drive. Bendix Aviation Corporation followed on 13 April 1929. In November 1936 his South Bend workers sat down in the plant — the first sit-down strike in a United States auto plant — and eight days later the company recognized UAW Local 9; the strike is the labor record's, and stands here as the defining event of his South Bend years. The end came in stages: General Motors, which had been accumulating Bendix stock, began taking over the company in 1937, though Bendix remained chairman of Bendix Aviation until 1942. Under Ernest Breech, president from 1942, the corporation he no longer controlled reached $900 million in sales in 1944 — a corporate figure, printed as such. His personal end came in a South Bend courtroom, on an involuntary bankruptcy petition; the fortune that the Seventh Circuit's record puts above $38 million in 1929 was discharged in bankruptcy six years before his death. The fortune's full pricing — and the "$50 million" figure in circulation, for which no carrier was found — is the Wealth section's.

Sources:

1. Businesses — "Bendix — the starter drive, the brakes, and what remains" (the biography and the drive; the 1914 patent application and the Eclipse license; the 1919 Winkler-Grimm purchase; the Perrot Brake Company of November 1923 and the Bendix Corporation of 1924; Bendix Aviation, 13 April 1929; the 1936 sit-down; Ernest Breech's presidency from 1942 and the 1944 corporate sales figure).
2. Inventors & Inventions — the Bendix drive as a Chicago patent (US 1,125,935, filed 2 May 1914); the starter claim tested and not carried.
3. Great Fortunes — "Bendix" (Part Two) — the net worth above $38,000,000 in 1929 on the Seventh Circuit's record (In re Bendix, 1942); General Motors' accumulation and the takeover from 1937; the chairmanship of Bendix Aviation to 1942; the involuntary bankruptcy in a South Bend courtroom and the discharge six years before his death; the uncarried "$50 million."