Henry Synck

Who is Henry Synck?

Henry Synck, Jr. was an American industrialist who participated in the development of mechanized farming.

In the farming communities of Ohio, fertilization of fields was possible only by the distribution of animal excrement, usually mixed with bedding straw to create a semi-solid mixture of manure. The task of shoveling and distributing the manure was backbreaking and there were many attempts made to mechanize this process. One such example was a patent by a Daniel Merrell in 1886 for a mechanized "manure spreader". There were a number of other patent filings prior to the onset of the 20th century. In 1899 John M Kramer, Fred Heckman and Henry Synck, Jr., all of whom lived in the small farming community of Maria Stein, OH were awarded a patent for a device to spread manure which they named a "manure distributor". Synck subsequently worked with his future father-in-law, Joseph Oppenheim, to develop the first practical manure spreader. Oppenheim's 1900 invention was so successful that it spawned a major manufacturing company, the New Idea Spreader Works, later renamed the New Idea Farm Machinery Company in 1899.