{"id":59244,"date":"2015-11-24T00:09:16","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T08:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/?p=59244"},"modified":"2015-11-24T00:09:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T08:09:16","slug":"59244","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/59244","title":{"rendered":"Thank you, Farmer Froelich!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tJohn Froelich was born on this day in 1849. Who? John Froelich.<\/p>\n

John was the inventor of the first gas-powered tractor, an invention that dramatically changed the lives of farmers everywhere. Prior to John’s invention, farmers relied on either horse-drawn field equipment\u00a0or bulky and dangerous steam-powered equipment that resulted in frequent fires.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Evolution of sickle and flail, 33 horse team harvester, cutting, threshing and sacking wheat, Walla Walla, Washington, 1902 via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

photo by Brunswyk via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1890, Farmer Froelich tried something new: he mounted a\u00a0one-cylinder gasoline engine onto the running gear of his steam-powered thresher. (Gasoline, or internal combustion engines were a new invention; Karl Benz, founder of Mercedes-Benz,\u00a0had just designed the first automobiles in production in 1885.) With his experiment a success, he went on to found the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company, and continued to work on his engine, but by 1913, he had\u00a0sold only\u00a020 tractors. That didn’t stop John though\u2014plowing through adversity\u00a0is\u00a0something farmers know well.\u00a0John continued to improve his tractor engine, and considered it a success when he sold 118 tractors in 1914 alone. He named his hit The Waterloo Boy and went on to sell 8,000 tractors\u00a0by 1918, when plow-manufacturing company Deere & Company (later renamed John Deere)\u00a0bought the company for over 2 million dollars!<\/p>\n

The Waterloo Tractor Works, in Waterloo, Iowa,\u00a0is still owned by John Deere, and is one of the largest tractor factories in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Thank you, John, for your visionary invention.<\/p>\n

\"\"\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Froelich was born on this day in 1849. Who? John Froelich. John was the inventor of the first gas-powered tractor, an invention that dramatically changed the lives of farmers everywhere. Prior to John’s invention, farmers relied on either horse-drawn … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gift_for_gab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}