Diamond Chain

As the first United States manufacturer of chain that a man’s legs could not break, called block chain, Indianapolis Chain & Stamping, as Diamond Chain was first called, led the bicycle explosion of the Gay 90’s. As the principal supplier of chain’s next evolution, roller chain that machines could not break, it was then Diamond Chain that led the fledgling automobile industry. In the chapter ahead, you will learn about something we all rely upon daily to move many things, including our physical selves, about. You will also acquire a deep appreciation for the company that put Indianapolis on the leader board as it continues to make endless miles of something we all take for granted – load bearing chain!

While chains have been around since before the time of Christ and were used in the form of heavy iron rings connected to each other to draw water out of a well, for example, two thousand years would pass before the steel they would need to engage continuously with gears would be invented. In 1855, when Charles Bessemer made it possible to mix different metals with iron to not only make it stronger, he also made it possible for the alloy that resulted, called steel, to be thinner.

An unstoppable wave of machines resulted. By 1869, shapeable and strong, steel, for example,  became the handlebars, rims, spokes, hubs, frames, pedals, and crank arms of the first bicycle, the big wheeled Penny Farthing. On the HiWheel, or Ordinary, as it is also called, one pedals the same wheel he or she steers. Direct drive, this design made no use of chain.

These tall bikes ruled the mostly dirt roads of the day for the next decade and a half until Hans Renold invented the block chain in Manchester, England. 

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Renold’s method of putting a tiny bushing on every other link was the magic that gears needed to be able to repeatedly deliver a human’s power to wheels. His 1880 contrivance, while seminal, was also expensive and little known in America because it had to be imported from England.

It also did not not achieve widespread recognition until 1885. It was then that Renold made his patent  free to the bicycle industry. Seizing upon this development, John Starley brought the first chain driven bicycle, the  Rover Safety, to the European market. It featured two wheels a person could stand over. Since, in Renold’s spirit, the Rover was also not protected by a patent, the chain driven bicycle industry exploded in the United Kingdom. 

In America, however, the price for a chain driven bike remained out of reach for most people. In 1890, a small company formed in Indianapolis, called Indianapolis Chain & Stamping, to change all this by mass producing chain and soon, Renold’s invention. And change it they would as bikes with equal sized wheels exploded in popularity all across America, from Boston to Chicago, Indianapolis and San Francisco. etc..

Because they helped to make bicycles affordable to the masses, Indianapolis Chain & Stamping, was a key player in the Gay 90’s, when pedal machines had become the kings of the roads they brought about. Because of the equal sized wheels made possible by chain, the young and the old could enjoy bikes that allowed them to easily stop with both feet landing on the ground. No longer being such a test of agility and breakneck daring, the safety bikes became attractive to women as well.

In 1899, Col Albert Pope, the man who brought bicycling to America when he began importing the HiWheel bike from England (in 1878), bought Indianapolis Chain & Stamping. His plan was to put all of the various parts of the bicycle industry he had come to own, 50 different businesses, under one roof. He also changed the name to Diamond Chain, using the catch phrase that nothing outlasts a diamond.

As the 20th Century approached, however, the bicycle began to wane in the face of an all new attraction – the motorized contraptions that were coming into favor. In the face of this, though, until 1903  the only product Pope’s company made was bicycle block chain.

This despite the fact that in 1898, superior roller chain had come about. Invented in Germany by the Nevoigt brothers of the Diamant Bicycle Company, it was quieter and smoother, than block chain. It also performed better when gear sizes had to be changed quickly because there was a tiny bush bearing on every roller, instead of on every other one.

Roller chain was also well suited for machines that moved at high RPMs and with great force. So Pope sat back and watched as he let president, Lucius Wainright explore the options available to his company with fuel powered contrivances. It wasn’t long before Diamond Chain was caught up in the next wave that was sweeping the world – the automobile.  By 1905, for $400,000 Pope had sold out of the business.

Pope was still around, however, when Diamond Chain powered the first flight. When Lucius Wairwight took over the reins of Pope’s company at the beginning of the 20th Century, from Indianapolis, he already had deep roots in the bicycle business, He even manufactured a line of safety bicycles called the Ben Hur that a couple of brothers in Dayton, a little over a hundred miles away, sold for him. Also Diamond Chain dealers, they had begun to experiment with fight.

Even though no one the Wright Bros. approached said they would build a motor for their plane, Wainwright told them his company would help in whatever way they could. He offered Diamond Chain’s resources for all the different chains they would need as his engineers went on to customize product for the Wrights. In the end, the power plant the brothers ended up having to make themselves required seven chains!

The 1903 Kitty Hawk success that resulted would go on to change the world forever. It would shrink the size of the planet and put most anywhere within a day or a few  days reach instead of weeks and months. 16 years later, one of the Wright’s was still so grateful to Diamond Chain that, in a letter dated May 24, 1919, Orville Wright wrote to L. M. Wainwright,

“I have never forgotten the interest you took and the
help you gave us when we were building our first flying machine.”

Going back to the very beginning of Diamond Chain, they  incorporated on Christmas Eve in 1890. They started out with four machines on the second floor of a tin-smith’s shop. Their original location, 26 E South, is now a public parking lot. 

Even though they did not sell block chain originally, the demand was so huge for the chains they did make that in two years they moved to the third floor of a steam laundry where they started mass producing Renold’s invention. It was here that they stayed for three more years even though they had to send pins and link plates to Cleveland for hardening.

In 1895, they built their own factory, a two story brick building that they stayed in until 1918. When they opened their new plant, quickly they grew to 500 employees!  A large percentage of their work force was women.

Once located at 241 W Georgia St,  the above building has since given way
to the sprawling Indiana Convention center.

About their 1895 factory, an April 1905 article in Iron Age Magazine describes it in this way:

“The factory is a model one, system, cleanliness, accuracy and quality being the foundation for all of its product. The plant is filled with automatic machinery operated by 28 motors. Thousands of feet of chain are used throughout the mill in addition to over four miles of leather belting. An independent gas plant is operated for case hardening and tempering, and the uniformity of the heat treatment is gained by a thorough system of pyrometry, scientifically operated, such as is used by the twist drill manufacturers. A thorough experimental and testing department is maintained, and the whole plant shows prosperity and progress.”

While Edward Fletcher, Glenn G. Howe and Arthur Newby were the three men who formed Diamond Chain, Newby would go on to become a huge part of the Indianapolis landscape. Besides being a very good friend of the legendary Carl Fisher because of the Zig Zag Bike Club he formed where the two met, Newby was also one of the fathers of the still highly esteemed Butler University, as well as the Indy 500 Motor Speedway. Newby also built the oldest still standing structure in the US that made motorcars, the cavernous and widely respected National Motor Vehicle Company (located next to the Monon Greenway at 22nd in Indianapolis). He even built the Newby Oval, a short lived velodrome (1898-1902)  in Indianapolis that was lighted and once one of the best in the world.

 As for the Newby Oval, it was a quarter-mile board track that had a football gridiron in the infield. Located at E 30th St and Central Ave, it had a 15,000 seat grandstand and the famous six-day bicycle races were originated here. Marshall Walter (Major) Taylor, the famous black bicycle racer born in Indianapolis, for whom the present Indianapolis Velodrome is named, raced at this velodrome for three of the four years it was open.

It would take seven years before Newby would invest in another race track. When the Indy 500 Motor Speedway opened in 1909, even though Newby was long gone from Diamond Chain, the new speedway he had helped to form, would go on to establish the efficacy of his old company’s products.

Newby had also been good friends with Henry Ford. And the Diamond Chain company benefitted from that association as well in 1908 when it became the chain supplier for every engine in the first mass produced Model-T automobiles.

In  1913, when the first moving assembly line at Henry Ford’s Model T factory in Highland Park went into operation on Oct. 7, 1913, one hundred and fifty feet of rope was used. With the help of a winch the rope pulled each chassis across the floor to each station along the way where 140 assemblers installed parts on it. Four months later, in early January 1914, the rope was replaced with an endless Diamond Chain.

By 1918, Diamond Chain had outgrown its Georgia St. location and built a building so large that if all of its four floors were placed end to end on the ground, it would have made a building 60 feet wide and almost half a mile long. That was still not enough.

The demand for bicycle chain was so great that by 1920, even with their big new building, all the orders for it  couldn’t be met.  The call for floor space continued, particularly for more ground flooring for the installation of heavy machinery so the company could make al the new and different kinds of chains it was being asked to produce. In the fall of 1928, a four story addition was added to the east end of the building with the first two floors for factory and the top two for offices.

By the time of World War II, the needs of war machines replaced the needs of cyclists. During the Second World  War, the plant operated day and night turning out chains and sprockets (they made sprockets from 1911 to 1976) for badly needed military equipment. On aircraft alone, for example, chains performed more than 30 different functions. Diamond Chain was also used on ships, ammunition hoists, diesel engines, trains, fork-lift trucks, cranes and various material handling implements.

Even after the war, the company kept bursting at the seams. From 1947 to 1980 the company nearly doubled in size adding another 236,000 square feet for everything from production to packing, shipping, storage and office space. In sum, after four separate additions, the total number of square feet under roof now exceeds half a million square feet!!.

At this enormous facility, Diamond Chain, now owned by AMSTED Industries Incorporated, produces what is known as the best chain money can buy for a widely diverse range of different markets. These include industrial plants, oil and gas exploration and production, agricultural equipment, special industrial machinery, construction and mining equipment, recreational vehicles, and material handling equipment.

An international  business concern with worldwide influence, it all started with making premier chain for the bicycle. This as Diamond Chain continues to have a massive impact on the world of today. From Indianapolis!!

Other posts about Indianapolis history Martin Krieg created as he wrote "How Indianapolis Built America" are at this link HERE