In the 19th century thrashing machines at harvest time were bulky, difficult to move and dangerous to operate. From one small change they progressed into todays tractors seen on farms all over the world. A look at one man who did much to create that change.
John Froelich invented the very first internal combustion traction motor, or tractor as they are better known in farming circles. He was born on November 24th 1849 at Girard, Iowa.
As the 19th century came to a close Froelich had a grain elevator and threshing service. At every years harvest he and a crew of hired hands would operate the mobile but heavy steam powered thresher in Iowa and both North and South Dakota, threshing the farmers crops for a fee. His machine was not only heavy, it was hard to move from place to place and expensive to use. It was also a dangerous piece of equipment. One spark from the boiler could set off a fire in the tinder dry prairie.
In 1890 he tried a new idea. Instead of his machine being powered by the heavy and bulky unsafe steam engine with the assistance of a blacksmith he mounted a much smaller one cylinder engine fuelled by gasoline to the running gear of his thresher and tested it in a field nearby.
The testing was a success and when it came to harvest time the new machine was a hit. It was much more economical to run and not a single fire to contend with. In 1894 along with eight investors Froelich formed the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company, they built four prototype tractors and sold two. To make more money they made stationary engines, the first one powered a printing press at the Waterloo Courier newspaper.
Froelich left the company in 1895 wanting to concentrate on farming equipment in general and not engines. Waterloo continued with its designs on improving tractors. Between 1896 and 1914 it only sold 20 tractors. In 1914 the company introduced its first single speed tractor which saw a big leap in sales, 118 in 1914. the next year they introduced a two speed model and the success continued further.
In 1918 the Waterloo company was bought by a plow manufacturing company called John Deere for $2,350,000. The Waterloo Tractor Works is still owned by John Deere and it remains to this day as one of the largest tractor manufacturing factories in the United States.
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