Establishment
Van Dyne and Crotty began their business by renting industrial shop towels to full service gas stations, manufacturing plants like NCR, Delco Products, Frigidaire and the numerous tool and die shops that supported the automotive manufacturing industry in Southwest Ohio.
The company thrived in the area, which was often called "Little Detroit" due to Charles Kettering who had invented the automobile self-starter and held numerous patents at NCR for the cash register.
General Motors could not persuade Patterson to move to Detroit so they built numerous plants around him in the Dayton area, which later evolved into DELCO (Dayton Engineering Laboratory Company).
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