John Froelich
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Froelich (1849 – 1933) was an inventor who lived in the U.S. state of Iowa, and invented the first practical gasoline powered farm tractor.
John Froelich was the son of Henry Froelich and Kathryn Gutheil, German immigrants to the United States who arrived in Clayton County, Iowa in 1847. John was born in 1849, and grew up to be a farmer near the small village of Froelich, Iowa, named for John's father. John Froelich's love of machines led him to operate a grain elevator and own a steam powered wheat threshing operation.
Froelich first conceived of a gasoline powered tractor in 1890, after purchasing a Van Duzen gasoline engine to power his grain elevator. Froelich noticed that farmers in South Dakota, where he often went in the fall to thresh wheat, had trouble finding coal or wood to fuel their steam engines. Working together with blacksmith William Mann in Mann's shop in Froelich, Iowa, Froelich mounted the gasoline engine on wooden beams over a running gear from a Robinson traction engine. Using several new parts designed by Mann and himself, Froelich was able to build a 16 horsepower (12 kW) tractor that could go both forward and backward by the year 1892. After completing the tractor, Froelich and Mann brought it to Langford, South Dakota, where they would connect it to a J.I. Case threshing machine, and thresh 72,000 bushels of grain in 52 days.
After returning from his successful run in South Dakota, Froelich met with some businessmen in Waterloo, Iowa, where they formed the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company to produce Froelich's tractor for sale. Only 2 tractors were sold, and both were later returned by unsatisfied customers. The company switched to making stationary engines in order to provide revenue. Froelich left the company in 1895, and eventually moved to St. Paul, Minnesota with his wife Kathryn Bickel, and their four children. Froelich's tractor was eventually revived and improved by the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company, which began building tractors again in 1911. The company was purchased by Deere & Company in 1918, and became the John Deere Tractor Company. Froelich, who received little money or recognition for his invention, died in 1933, in St. Paul. He was inducted to the Iowa Inventors Hall of Fame in 1991.
