Ole Evinrude
Ole Evinrude (
April 19,
1877 -
July 12,
1934) was a
Norwegian-American inventor.
Evinrude was born the son of Andrew Evinrude and Beata Dahl on a farm north of
Oslo. At the age of five he emigrated with his family to the United States, and they moved to
Cambridge, Wisconsin around
Lake Ripley. At sixteen he went to
Madison working in machinery stores, and he studied engineering on his own. Moving around, including to
Pittsburgh and
Chicago, he continued studying mechanical engineering and became a machinist while working at various machine tool firms.
In
1900, he returned to
Wisconsin and became a patternmaker and engineer for the
E. P. Allis Company located in
Milwaukee. He became focused on the internal-combustion engine and created a partership
Clemick & Evinrude to make custom engines. In
1909, he created the first practical and reliable
outboard motor and claimed to have been inspired while rowing a boat on a hot day to get ice cream for the woman who would become his wife, Bessie Emily Cary.
His wife assisted him in marketing the design with an early advertisement stating: "Don't row. Use the Evinrude detachable rowboat motor." They also began to sell the motor to
Danish and
Norwegian fishermen, as well as finding other markets overseas. Already in
1912, they had a factory with 300 workers.
Early on, Ole sold his part of the firm to his friend C. J. Meyer. Despite taking a break, Ole continued to be interested in motors, and in
1919, he invented a new two-cylinder motor that was both more powerful and of lower weight. Meyer declined to produce the new motor, and Evinrude opened a new company the
Elto Outboard Motor Company (Elto representing the "Evinrude Light Twin Outboard" motor name) which had great success selling the new design. In
1926, Evinrude produced a new design, the
Super Elto Twin. Although he faced competition from other companies like the
Johnson Motor Company of
South Bend, Indiana, Evinrude's company survived through acquisitions and formed the
Outboard Marine Corporation.
After his death in 1934 (just one year after the loss of his wife Bess), his son Ralph Evinrude took over the business. Ralph was married to actress
Frances Langford from 1955 to his death in 1986.
*
Kenneth Bjork. "Ole Evinrude and the Outboard Motor," Norwegian-American Studies and Records 12 (1941): 167-177[
1]
*
Fred Carstensen. "Evinrude, Ole"; American National Biography Online, Feb. 2000.
*
Brief biography
