Vincent Hugo Bendix was an American inventor and industrialist. Vincent Bendix was a pioneer and leader in both the automotive and aviation industries during the 1920s and 1930s.
Vincent Bendix, an American inventor and industrialist who contributed to the development of automobiles and aircraft.
He was the eldest of three children , the parents were immigrants from Moline, Sweden. While in Moline the family name was changed to “Bendix”. They later moved to Chicago, Illinois and Vincent purchased the Palmer Mansion in 1930, for $3,000,000. At the age of 16, Bendix ran away from home to New York City, where he studied engineering at night school. In 1907 he organized the Bendix Company of Chicago and produced more than 7,000 automobiles before the company failed in 1909.
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 spring and the higher speed of the running engine) pull back and disengage automatically at higher speed. This drive made the electric starter practical for automobile engines and later for engines in aircraft and other motorized vehicles.
In 1913 sold manufacturing rights to the Eclipse Machine Company of Elmira, N.Y. The Bendix Corporation, founded in 1924 with a factory in South Bend, Ind., producing automobile brake systems, in 1929 became Bendix Aviation Corporation and eventually manufactured a wide range of automotive, aviation, marine, radio, and radar equipment. More than 5,500 patents were held by Bendix or his company. Keenly interested in advancing aviation, he founded the Bendix Transcontinental Air Race in 1931. In 1942 he organized Bendix Helicopters, Inc.