General Electric in South Bend — what the record holds

THE CLAIM TESTED

No GE works stood here: The question is worth asking outright, because the other great Indiana city of this build had a General Electric works of more than 20,000 wartime workers, and South Bend's electrical industry invites the assumption of the same. The record reached for this section holds no General Electric plant, works or division seated in South Bend at any date. What it holds is two documented ties, each at its true size. The first is a man: George Cutter of the entry above, whose 1883–1890s career ran through Thomson-Houston — the firm that became half of General Electric in the 1892 merger — and whose international selling for it earned him, in The History Museum's phrase, the unofficial title of founder of GE International. South Bend's electrical giant was not GE; it was Cutter's own company, and after 1920 it was Westinghouse's. The second tie is a machine: inside Singer's cabinet works, the plant ran on its own General Electric shop motors, among them a wooden-framed GE motor of 1898 that the railroad history of the Singer works records as still preserved. GE apparatus worked in South Bend factories; a GE factory did not. The point matters to this record because the same discipline runs the other way: the Bendix name, founded here, is not evidence that Bendix products were made here — as the entries below now take up in order.

Sources:

1. The History Museum, A Bend in Time, George Cutter episode — Cutter's Thomson-Houston service from 1883 and the "founder of GE International" title (the Cutter entry above).
2. American Rails, "New Jersey, Indiana & Illinois Railroad: A South Bend Shortline" — inside the Singer cabinet works, the plant's own General Electric shop motors, including a wooden-framed machine of 1898 still preserved; the cabinet works closed in 1955.