BRAKE & FRONT END, August 1957 - Merrill Axle and Wheel has been in business since 1928 in the Denver, CO, area. In 1945, Marcellus "Celly" Merrill developed and was manufacturing an innovative wheel balancer for automobiles. At that time, most automotive wheel balancing was done by removing the wheel and tire from the vehicle and then doing some type of static balancing without rotating the wheel. Merrill came up with the idea of balancing the tire and wheel while they were still mounted on the car. The balancer worked by spinning them at high speed and electronically analyzing the vibrations to trigger a stroboscope. Technicians could then determine where balancing weights should be added. Merrill might have parlayed the hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits from his patents on the Merrill Dynamic Aligner into vast personal wealth. However, he was an inventor by nature and he plowed much of his earnings into other inventions.