John Deere

John Deere (February 7, 1804 – May 17, 1886) was an American blacksmith and manufacturer who founded Deere & Company— the largest agricultural and construction equipment manufacturers in the world. more...

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Early life

Deere was born in Rutland, Vermont, the son of William Rinold Deere, a tailor. His father disappeared en route to England in 1808, where he was seeking a possible inheritance. John received a basic education from the local common school and briefly attended Middlebury College, before dropping out. With no inheritance and a meager education, he was apprenticed in 1821, at age 17, by his mother. He served four years as apprentice to Captain Benjamin Lawrence, a prosperous Middlebury blacksmith, and entered the trade for himself in 1825.

In 1827 he married Demarius Lamb, and by 1836 the couple had four children, with a fifth child on the way. The business was not doing very well and Deere was having trouble with his creditors. Facing bankruptcy, Deere sold the shop to his father-in-law, and departed for Illinois. He left his wife and family, who were to join him later.

Steel plow

Deere settled in Grand Detour, Illinois. As there were no other blacksmiths in the area, Deere had no difficulty finding work. Growing up in his father’s Rutland, Vermont tailor shop, Deere had polished and sharpened needles by running them through sand. This polishing helped the needles sew through tough leather. He found that cast-iron plows were not working very well in the tough prairie soil found in Illinois, and remembered the polished needles. Deere came to the conclusion that a plow made out of highly polished steel and a correctly shaped moldboard (the self-scouring steel plow) would better be able to handle the soil conditions of the prairie, especially its sticky clay. There are varying versions of the inspiration for Deere to create the invention he is famed for, the steel plow. In another version he recalled the way the polished steel pitchfork tines moved through hay and soil and thought that the same effect could be obtained for a plow.

In 1837 Deere developed and manufactured the first commercially-successful cast-steel plow. The wrought iron plow had a steel share which made it ideal for the tough soil of the Midwest, and worked better than other plows. By early 1838 Deere completed his first steel plow and sold it to a local farmer, Lewis Crandall, who quickly spread word of his success with Deere's plow, and so two neighbors soon placed orders with Deere. Confident that he had some stability, Deere moved his family to Grand Detour later that year. By 1841 he was manufacturing 75 plows per year and 100 plows per year the next.

Read more at Wikipedia.org