John Froelich

Who was John Froelich?

John Froelich was an American inventor who lived in Waterloo, Iowa and, in 1892, developed the first stable gasoline/petrol-powered tractor with forward and reverse gears.

John Froelich attended school in Galena, Illinois and at the College of Iowa. There he learned a lot about machinery. After college, he decided he would build the very first gasoline powered tractor to go both forward and reverse.

Designed by Mann and himself, Froelich was able to build a 16 horsepower tractor that could go both forward and backward by the year 1892. After completing the tractor Froelich and Mann brought it to Langford, South Dakota, where they would connect it to a J.I. Case threshing machine, and thresh 72,000 bushels in 52 days.

Around 1895, he left Waterloo, Iowa and settled in Marshalltown, Iowa, then in St. Paul, Minnesota. He later developed a new type of clothes-washing machine he named the Froelich Neostyle Washer.