The Hendrick Manufacturing Company was the nation's largest manufacturer of perforated screens. The company was founded by Eli E. Hendrick (1832-1909) in 1885 in Carbondale, Pennsylvania. Eli Emory Hendrick, an inventor and entrepreneur, was born on May 9, 1832, at Plymouth, Michigan, and trained as a wood turner. By 1861, he was living at Franklin in the Pennsylvania Oil Region and experimenting with the manufacture of lubricating oils. He moved to Carbondale in the early 1860s continuing to operating his refining business. In 1879, Hendrick sold part of his refining business to the Standard Oil Company and signed a ten-year management and consulting contract with them. This contract allowed Hendrick to develop other businesses.

In 1876, he had begun manufacturing punched metal screens at Carbondale. This business was organized as the Hendrick Manufacturing Company in 1885, first as a limited partnership and in 1901 as a family-owned corporation. The company developed a wide array of punched or perforated sheet metal and steel products, including screens used in refining oil and sizing coal and grated metal walkways for sewers and ships.

In addition to running the Hendrick Manufacturing Company, Hendrick continued to invent and experiment. Throughout the late nineteenth century, Hendrick patented a number of processes including drying gunpowder, refrigeration, and recovering paraffin. Hendrick supported many local Pennsylvania businesses and was an early investor in the Klots Throwing Company, a large silk manufacturing company. In 1893, Hendrick was elected Mayor of Carbondale and served a single term. In his later years, Hendrick also engaged in large-scale farming and fruit growing in southern California and invested in cold storage warehouses in Los Angeles. Hendrick died at Carbondale on October 25, 1909.

By the end of World War II, the Hendrick Manufacturing Company was the nation's largest manufacturer of perforated screens. The company remained in the hands of Hendrick's descendants until the 1980s, when it was sold. Like many specialty companies, it has continued to prosper by adapting to a changing customer base, producing decorative and architectural perforated metals as well as its traditional industrial products.