 | ||||
Content Copyright 2006-2007 essentialiowa.com Privacy Policy
Posted September 6, 2007
John Froelich changed the face of agriculture – and ultimately, of rural America – when he loaded up his gasoline-powered tractor and shipped it from northeast Iowa to Langford, S.D., on Sept. 6, 1892. A native Iowan, Froelich owned a grain elevator in the northeast Iowa town named for his father, Henry, and made extra money threshing grain in the wheat fields of South Dakota each fall.
In 1892, Froelich built the first gasoline-powered tractor that propelled itself backward and forward and shipped it to Langford to use harvesting wheat. Steam-powered threshing machines had been used in the
FAMOUS IOWANS
The famous (and infamous) who have had a lasting impact on the state and the world
John Froelich, inventor of the tractor
past, but the sparks from the fire often set the fields ablaze and required a source for wood and water which was scarce in the expansive Dakota plains.
The novel machine increased production fourfold; the tractor-powered thresher managed to harvest 72,000 bushels of wheat in 52 days, working in temperatures from below zero to a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The tractor was viewed by hundreds of curious South Dakotans who marveled at its design. The experiment was successful enough that it led Frolich and others to found the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company in 1893, a forebear to the John Deere Tractor Works, which remains one of Waterloo’s most important industries.
That year, the company built four more tractors – two which actually worked – but decided to focus its energy on building stationary engines. Because Froelich’s interest was primarily in tractors, he left the company in 1895. (The company took a renewed interest in tractors in 1911 and began producing the machines again in 1914.
| ||||
Want to help pay for more content, hosting costs, etc? Click here.
TALKBack
Ask questions, leave a comment, talk about Iowa food and travel, at our new message boards.
A Guide For Newbies and Out-Of-Staters.
THERules
Ask questions, leave a comment, talk about Iowa food and travel, at our new message boards.
A Guide For Newbies and Out-Of-Staters.
INDEPTHIowa
During the next ten years more than 20,000 tractors were manufactured and sold by the company.)
In 1918 Deere and Company bought the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company for $1 million. Until that time, the company has primarily manufactured plows and other horse-drawn implements.
John Froelich was born in Giard, Iowa, on November 24, 1849, but spent much of his life in Froelich. He married Kathryn Bickel and fathered two sons and two daughters but never reaped much success from his invention. He moved to Dubuque where he manufactured engines for Novelty Iron Works. He tried working for his brother, Gottlieb and was vice president of the Henderson-Froelich Manufacturing factory by 1910. Eventually he moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he worked as an investment counselor. But his timing couldn't have been worse: the Crash of 1929 dealt a fatal blow to that profession. Almost broke, he spent his last years with his daughter Jenetie in St. Paul where he died in 1933.
In 1991, he was inducted into the Iowa Inventors Hall of Fame.
John Froelich