Evinrude

Ole Evinrude, inventor and entrepreneur, founded the production and led the company.

Upon returning to his native Wisconsin after studying, at the age of 23 (1900), Evvinrud opened a workshop and created his own self-propelled carriages, which he immediately experienced - to the surprise and dismay of his colleagues and acquaintances. Soon he won fame as an engineer.

The manager in the modest office of Ole was his young neighbor Bess Cary. In the summer, during a picnic on the island to buy his favorite ice cream, Evinrude made a 5-mile swim on a boat in the 38- degree heat. Although he was a strong man, and far from lazy, but for him such a walk became tiresome. Ole realized that a self-propelled car is not the only vehicle that can run on a gasoline engine.

Carey and Evinrud married in 1906. In 1907, they founded Evinrude Motors in Milwaukee. The company immediately began to develop its first outboard engine.

The following summer, the first field tests of the engine Ole Evinrud appeared. It was a single-cylinder 1.5 hp. the engine weighs 62 pounds (25.3 kg), and, according to Carey, looked like a coffee grinder.

Although other inventors also experimented with the production of outboard motors, starting from 1896, only Ole Evrud's engines had commercial success. In 1911, Evingrud made a patent for his invention (No. 1001260; "Marine Propulsion System") and immediately formed a business partnership with a towing magnate named Chris Meyer (Chris Meyer). Evinrud family, literally, lived by the production and promotion of their engines, and in 1914 was forced to sell their business interests to Meyer in order to take a vacation. Having promised Meyer not to work for five years, Ole Evinrud, along with his wife and young son Ralph, set off on a trip to the USA.

After five years, the Evrowdoff family returned to Milwaukee. Ole immediately offered Meyer his new revolutionary invention: a two-cylinder 3 hp. 48 pound aluminum engine. Meyer refused, so in 1921 Ole and Bessie formed the company ELTO Outboard Motor Company (ELTO - Evinrude's Light Twin Outboard), which successfully competed with the previous company Ole Evinrude. This new outboard was also very successful, but Ole did not stop and improved his inventions, and his new company's market share increased. However, for many years, the main rival of the company Ole Evinrud was the company Johnson Motors (since 1922), specializing in stationary motors and boats.

In 1929, the company ELTO merged with the first company Evinrud (with Meyer), as well as in a trilateral merger with the company Johnson Motors. This is how the Marine Corporation is formed and Ole Evinrud becomes the head of the new company. Later, on October 28, 1929, the stock market collapsed and the Great Depression began. Evinrud's company barely made ends meet, but even in these difficult times, Olya never lost her optimism and generosity. He even issued salaries to employees from his personal pocket to help them through difficult times.

Meanwhile, Evingrud and his staff have developed more industry innovations: an electric starter, a folding shaft, a 40-hp Big Four motor. Also, the OMC began to expand, producing, for example, "Evinrude Lawn-Boy" lawn mowers (1932).

In 1933, Bess Evinrude died. The following year, Ole Evinrude died. The post of head of the Outboard Motor Corporation (OMC) was taken by their son Ralph. It was Ralph Evinrud who previously supervised the acquisition of Johnson Motors, and in 1935 he restructured the corporation on the basis of a “consolidated competition”, where brands compete with each other within the framework of one OMS company (Johnson and Evinrude boat engines). OMC remains the undisputed leader in the production of outboard motors.

In the 1960s, the name was changed to Outboard Marine Corporation (OMC). The main directions of the company were the production of boat motors Johnson and Evinrude, as well as various brands of boats, such as Chris Craft, Lowe Boats, Princecraft, Four Winns.