The town of Warsaw, Indiana was officially established in 1836. It was named for the capital of Poland, in tribute to Thaddeus Kosciusko, the Polish engineer hero of the American Revolution. Originally it was an outpost where traders and trappers would sell their wares to farmers who had established homesteads in the area. But then, in 1854, the Pennsylvania Railroad reached Warsaw, bringing with it hundreds of visitors who came to enjoy the area’s fresh air and pristine lakes. Many of these visitors stayed on to become full-time residents, and Warsaw grew.
In 1870, a second rail line - the Big Four Railroad - arrived, bringing with it the modern world. Gas lights were installed in 1880. The telephone arrived in 1882, with the first line strung to the office of the town physician, Dr. Eggleston (that would be a harbinger of things to come.) Lines for water, gas, and electricity were installed by the end of the century, and Warsaw was thriving. It became known throughout the area as the “Lake City.”
But the rail lines had a second effect that would propel Warsaw to an entirely new level of renown. By being situated in the middle of the country, at the junction of two major rail systems, Warsaw had all the makings of the perfect sales and distribution center. A salesman could hop a train in Warsaw and be anywhere in the country in just a few days. All he would need is a small, high-quality product which he could carry and sell.
That product turned out to be a medical splint. In 1895, an inventor named Revra Dupuy designed a new fiber splint for setting bone fractures, to replace the unwieldy wooden splints that had been in use up to that time. It was huge improvement that would have a transformative effect on the medical industry. Working out of a small office located in the Hayes Hotel in Warsaw, Dupuy built a sales force and sent it out across the country, selling the benefits of this new product to doctors in large city hospitals and in small-town private practices. Everywhere these salesmen went with their new product, they were successful.
Perhaps the most successful salesman of them all was a Warsaw native named J.O. Zimmer. After working odd jobs and as a telegraph operator, Zimmer joined the splint company in 1905. He quickly rose through the ranks to become national sales manager. But he had a greater ambition and thought he could make products that were even better. Together with his partner J.J. Ettinger, he established a new firm, Zimmer Manufacturing Company, on North Detroit Street. Their first design was a new and better kind of splint, made from lightweight aluminum.
Equipped with only a punch press, sheet metal forming equipment, a welding torch and various small tools, Zimmer and Ettinger set out to work. In May of 1927, they completed a prototype set of fifty samples which they brought to the American Medical Association meeting in Washington. To their delight, the industry response was positively overwhelming. Zimmer took dozens of orders. And that was just the beginning. Within the first year of operation, Zimmer was selling so many aluminum splints that they had surpassed the competition.
And that’s when the little town of Warsaw really began to heat up, with two companies battling for control of this rapidly developing medical market. Even with the coming of the Great Depression, there were no signs of slowing down. Warsaw hummed with new innovations, new products, and an ever-expanding workforce. Over the next fifty years, the population doubled. As other competitors entered the market, Warsaw grew to become a thriving medical metropolis, home to several of the largest medical device companies in the world.
Today, Zimmer is a global enterprise. It makes and sells products in the Americas, across Europe, the Middle East and Africa and throughout the Asia Pacific region.
But it all started in Warsaw. Where, thanks to the crossing of rail lines and the application of fiber and aluminum, the little trading post on the plains quickly grew up to become, “The Orthopaedics Capital of the World.”
