Left to right: Doug Davis, Jimmy Doolittle, Mary Pickford and Victor Bendix, 1934 (Burbank to Cleve- land). All the photographs in this article are from the private collection of Miriam Seymour.
BENDIX-MADE
“While our company designs and builds missiles and space systems, sophisticated aviation instruments and literally thousands of highly-engineered products, many people who recognize the Bendix name connect it with an automatic washer we never marketed.” – Bendix Energy Controls Division “Log,” September 1973
I recently received a collection of photographs that had not seen the light of day for decades while in the fi le cabinets of Miriam Seymour. Seymour has a long career in aviation as an airport administrator, pilot and magazine author, which accounts for the diverse subject matter in her old fi les. Before computer scanning and digital cameras, the only way to reproduce a photograph of a Douglas DC-3 or Curtiss Condor for a newspaper or magazine article was to get permission to take the photo or request it from a public relations offi ce. Glossy eight-by-ten-inch black-and-white
05 2014 20
By Giacinta Bradley Koontz
images taken of carefully staged aircraft, special equipment, factory assembly lines and smiling pilots were freely off ered by corporate marketing departments. “Stock photos” ap- pearing in any publication meant free advertising. In capital letters across one of Seymour’s aging manila
envelopes was the word “Bendix Washing Machine.” What was this doing among pictures of 1940s aircraft? In the same envelope were engineering drawings for small aircraft, a Bendix newsletter from 1973 and photographs of the famous Bendix Aviation trophy. I didn’t have to read the inscription on the reverse to recognize Jimmy Doolittle and Mary Pickford at the fi nish line with trophy winner Doug Davis shaking hands with Mr. Bendix. There is no better way to tell the rest of the Bendix story than with these enlarged photographs.
DOMmagazine
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