Ole Evinrude

Ole Evinrude (born O. Evenrudstuen ; born April 19, 1877 near Oslo ; † July 12, 1934 ) was a Norwegian-American inventor who made the outboard motor popular.

Life

He was born on a farm 100 km north of Oslo. In 1882 his parents emigrated to the USA and settled in Cambridge, Wisconsin , where Ole left elementary school early. He preferred to work with the farm tools and machinery, first with his father, then as a trainee and worker in factories in Chicago and Pittsburgh. He first read about the combustion engine in the 1880s. In 1900 he returned to Wisconsin, where he opened a store. In his spare time he built his own horseless cart .

Around 1903 he helped Harley and Davidson with their first vehicle.

His colleague in the office was the young neighbor Bess Cary, to whom he became engaged in 1906. While picnicking on an island, he took a five-mile rowboat trip to get his fiancée to get ice cream. Along the way, he came to believe that cars are not the only vehicles that could benefit from a gasoline engine.

In the summer of 1907 he tested his first outboard motor with 1.5 hp, which his wife looked more like a coffee grinder. He improved it over the next two years and received patent no. 1,001,260 ( Marine Propulsion System ) in 1911 . He founded the company Evinrude Motor Co. and marketed the engines under his family name Evinrude. Although other inventors had been experimenting with outboards since 1881, his first became successful.

In 1911 he entered into a partnership with the steamer magnate Chris Meyer. Because of Bess's deteriorating health, Ole sold the remainder of the business to Meyer in 1914 for vacation. Together with their son Ralph (born April 27, 1907) they traveled through the USA for 5 years.

When he returned, he thought it fair to offer Meyer his new invention, a two-cylinder, 3-horsepower outboard. Meyer refused. However, since this had the rights to the name Evinrude , Evinrude had to market its engine under the new company name "Elto" (Evinrude Light Twin Outboard). He thus led a successful competition with the von Meyer company. In 1929 the Elto , Evinrude and Lockwood companies were combined to form the "Outboard Motors Corporation" (OMC). Evinrude did not live to see the takeover of Johnson and the name changes via Outboard Marine and Manufacturing Company to Outboard Marine Corporation (with the abbreviation OMC unchanged).

swell

Evinrude, Johnson And The Legend Of OMC, Author: Jeffrey L. Rodengen, Ed .: Write Stuff Syndicate Inc., Ft. Lauderdale, 1992, ISBN 0-945903-10-3

Web links

• http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/evinrude.html