The Rise of Hired Girl, Inc.
The Door into SummerDan's small-scale invention becomes an expanding domestic-automation business, then a contested enterprise that continues to shape his future after he is forced out.
increasing
Bearing strength in each event
decreasing
Bearing strength in each eventdecreasingA Small Factory
A Small Factory
Independence as a plan
After wartime service, Dan and Miles Gentry set up a modest factory in surplus buildings. Dan brings engineering and much of the starting capital; Miles supplies business and legal experience.
The first product
Dan designs Hired Girl as a dependable floor-cleaning machine made from obtainable parts. Its ability to work without supervision—not an unprecedented scientific principle—makes it commercially useful and establishes the company's practical style.
The First Sales
The First Sales
From prototype to market
Dan and Miles build early units by hand and sell them through a discount house on consignment. The first hundred machines are inexpensive enough to demonstrate that modest capital and careful production engineering can sustain a new business.
Recognition and growth
A feature in a national magazine brings orders and forces the partners to hire help. Belle Darkin joins as secretary and bookkeeper, and the operation begins to outgrow its improvised beginnings.
A Broader Product Line
A Broader Product Line
Repairable design
Dan develops Window Willie and insists that its vulnerable components be replaceable rather than repaired in place. The plug-in principle reflects his belief that household machines should reduce frustration as well as labor.
A future under construction
As sales grow, Dan turns toward Flexible Frank, a general-purpose domestic automaton. For him, the company's success is valuable chiefly because it can finance invention without making him a subordinate in a large corporation.
A Battle for Direction
A Battle for Direction
Expansion or independence
Miles proposes selling the company into Mannix Enterprises, expanding production and distribution, and moving Flexible Frank rapidly toward the market. Dan counters with licensing and a small research operation that would protect his independence.
Control changes hands
Belle votes her shares with Miles, giving their proposal a majority. Dan discovers that the personal trust behind his partnership has not secured the company's control, and the decision begins the final rupture.
The Company Outlives Its Founding
The Company Outlives Its Founding
A new corporate path
After Dan is expelled, Hired Girl, Inc. continues and later licenses its manufacturing to Geary. Dan's inventions persist in the product lineage even while he has little reliable knowledge of the company's ownership or financial history.
Return to the enterprise
In 2001, Dan finds the company still influential and secures a role there. He eventually uses Ricky's surviving shares to reshape its leadership, while choosing to run his own engineering practice through licensing rather than surrendering his independence again.
After the Six Weeks War, in the Mojave Desert
Soon after the first Hired Girl model is assembled
During the early growth of the company
18 November 1970
From the 1970s through 2001
