Career
Vincent Bendix founded the Bendix Corporation of Chicago in 1907 to manufacture automobiles, called Bendix Buggies. After two years and producing 7000 vehicles the company failed. In 1910 however, Bendix invented and patented the Bendix drive, a gear that could engage an engine at zero rotational speed and then (through the aid of a solenoid that moved the shaft on which the gear was mounted) pull back and disengage automatically at higher speed (nominally the engine's running speed). This drive made the electric starter practical for automobile engines and later for engines in aircraft and other motorized vehicles.
Bendix founded the Bendix Brake Company in 1923, which acquired the rights to French engineer Henri Perrot's patents for brake drum/shoe design a year later.
He started the Bendix Aviation Corporation in 1929, and founded the Transcontinental Bendix Air Race in 1931. In 1942, Bendix started Bendix Helicopters, Inc. Bendix Aviation and Bendix Brake would later be renamed Bendix Corporation.
Read more about this topic: Vincent Hugo Bendix
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)