John Deere's polished steel plough cut open the American prairie
Midwestern soil was so rich and sticky that it clung to iron and wooden ploughs, forcing farmers to stop constantly to scrape them clean. A bankrupt Vermont blacksmith named John Deere fixed that with a highly polished steel plough the earth slid off. His company still sells machines under a leaping deer logo.
Deere, born in Rutland, Vermont, in 1804, moved to Grand Detour, Illinois, in 1836 to escape bankruptcy. There he ran a blacksmith shop, repairing things and making pitchforks and shovels, until his self-scouring steel plough set him apart. It made tilling the prairie practical and helped open the Great Plains to settlement. A partnership with Leonard Andrus built a water-powered factory producing about 100 ploughs in 1842 and around 400 the next year. In 1848 Deere moved to Moline, still the company's home, and by 1857 output neared 1,120 implements a month. It even made a few bicycles in the 1890s.
Tractors came later and defined the 20th century. Under president William Butterworth, the firm tried its own designs but in 1918 bought the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company instead. Its first combine harvester followed in 1927. According to the host of a television series profiling the company, it never repossessed equipment from American farmers during the Great Depression. In the Second World War it built military tractors alongside farm machinery.
Expansion went global, with the purchase of Germany's Heinrich Lanz in 1956 and a factory in Rosario, Argentina, from 1958. At home, a lavish 1960 launch in Dallas, attended by about 6,000 guests, unveiled the 10 series, more powerful and easier to service. Its 4010 sold more than 58,000 units and led to the 4020, often called the most popular tractor any American maker has produced. In 1972 the Generation II models offered an integrated cab called the Sound Gard.
Today Deere & Company makes farm, forestry and construction machinery, engines and lawn equipment, and offers financing. It trades on the New York Stock Exchange as DE, ranked No. 84 on the 2022 Fortune 500, and has used a leaping deer logo for over 155 years, with the slogan Nothing Runs Like a Deere.
Source: John Deere
