Railroad expansion throughout the nineteenth century created new opportunities for economic growth in the Cumberland Valley, and in Shippensburg industrial firms located along the tracks to receive raw materials and ship products to distant markets. Just before the turn of the twentieth century, brothers Charles B. and Harry H. Segner of Hagerstown designed a gasoline engine for farm use, formed the Domestic Engine Company, and sold their first engine, a 2.5 horsepower air-cooled model, to Elmer Hess of Lancaster County on Dec. 6, 1899. At about the same time, H. Milton Etter of Greencastle designed and patented a hand pump for farm use that was well suited to an area where wells were often deep. In 1903, Shippensburg businessmen saw the potential of combining the two machines and invited the owners of Domestic Engine to relocate there. Charles Segner became superintendent of the new firm, which began producing engines and pumps at a plant on this site in early 1905. The company first concentrated on the Model A engine and the Etter pump, which together could provide running water for rural households, then expanded into larger engines and many kinds of pumps, including enormous centrifugal pumps used by the New York City subway to remove water during floods. In the early 1950s, Hoffman Specialty Manufacturing Corp. of Indianapolis bought the company and shifted the Shippensburg facility to making iron and aluminum castings along with industrial pumps. About thirty years later, around the time Conrail abandoned the Cumberland Valley line, International Telephone and Telegraph bought Hoffman and moved production to Illinois, but local employees founded Shippensburg Pump Company, which continued the area's manufacturing tradition at a plant a few blocks away.