November 24, 1849: Father of the tractor is born
159 years ago today, John Froelich, the inventor of the first gasoline-powered farm tractor, was born in Froelich, Iowa. Froelich's tractor, completed in 1892, featured a Van Duzen one-cylinder gasoline engine mounted on wooden beams to operate a threshing machine.
Froelich manufactured several more tractors of this type during the year, and in September shipped one of his engine-powered tractors to a farm in Langford, South Dakota, where it was employed in agriculture activity for the first time.
Froehlich mounted a gasoline engine, built by the Van Duzen Gas and Gasoline Engine Co. of Cincinnati, on a Robinson running gear equipped with a traction arrangement of his own manufacture. The first gasoline tractor of record that was an operating success. It completed a 50-day threshing run...pulled the thresher over difficult terrain and operated in temperatures of -3 to 100 F
Froelich established the "Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company" in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1893, and began to manufacture tractors on a larger scale.
Froehlich, IA
In 1918, the Waterloo Traction Engine Company was purchased by the "John Deere Plow Company." John Deere, a long-established plow company, mass-produced gasoline-powered tractors based on Froelich's designs.
In the 1920's, American artist Grant Wood sketched this house near Froelich Iowa that became the background of one of the most important American works of art.
During the 1920s and 1930s, tractors rapidly changed the face of agriculture in America, and many traditional subsistence farmers were pushed off their land by the encroachment of large agricultural interests who utilized the efficient new farming technology.
Originally Posted by royalfan5
