John Froelich, inventor of the gas-powered tractor, is born
John Froelich the inventor of the first internal-combustion traction motor or tractor is born on this day in Girard Iowa.At the end of the 19th century Froelich operated a grain elevator and mobile threshing service Every year at harvest time he dragged a crew of hired hands and a heavy steam-powered thresher through Iowa and the Dakotas threshing farmers crops for a fee.His machine was bulky hard to transport and expensive to use and it was also dangerous One spark from the boiler on a windy day could set the whole prairie afire.So in 1890 Froelich decided to try something new Instead of that cumbersome hazardous steam engine he and his blacksmith mounted a one-cylinder gasoline engine on his steam engines running gear and set off for a nearby field to see if it worked.It did Froelichs tractor chugged along safely at three miles per hour.
But the real test came when Froelich and his team took their new machine out on their annual threshing tour and it was a success there too Using just 26 gallons of gas they threshed more than a thousand bushels of grain every day (72000 bushels in all).Whats more they did it without starting a single fire.In 1894 Froelich and eight investors formed the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company.They built four prototype tractors and sold two (though both were soon returned).
To make money the company branched out into stationary engines (its first one powered a printing press at the Waterloo Courier newspaper).Froelich was more interested in farming equipment than engines more generally however and he left the company in 1895.Waterloo kept working on its tractor designs but between 1896 and 1914 it sold just 20 tractors in all.In 1914 the company introduced its first Waterloo Boy Model R single-speed tractor which sold very well 118 in 1914 alone.
The next year its two-speed Model N was even more successful.In 1918 the John Deere plow-manufacturing company bought Waterloo for 2350000.The Waterloo Tractor Works still owned by John Deere remains one of the largest tractor factories in the United States.
