Lipe's brother, Willard Lipe, stepped up after his brother died in 1898 and the company began making three-speed transmissions.

"The question is how can we make manual transmissions more accommodating but provide efficiency improvements?"

Renna still made transmissions at high power every midnight, attempting to use crudely generated radio waves to contact friends somewhere out there, beyond the walls.

As a concept it was deceptively simple; rather than having fallible humans make numerous transmissions in the call for fire chain, let computers do the work.

Frank Conrad, a Westinghouse engineer, had been making transmissions from 8XK since 1916 that included music programming.

Capco, which is based in South Bend, Ind., makes manual transmissions and related parts.

Those operations include the company's $800 million automotive parts division, which makes transmissions and drive-train components.

Initially the joint venture made a 4-cylinder G180Z 1.8L petrol engines and 5-speed transmissions.

It makes front-wheel-drive, automatic transmissions and transmission components used by other GM facilities.

That plant had always made the engines and transmissions for the Union automobile from the start.