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 SNOWMOBILES OF YESTERDAY

There is a long-standing controversy over who actually invented the snowmobile. The controversy revolves about what is considered a "snowmobile" and whether any particular vehicle is in the direct line of snowmobile descent or not. Earliest over-the-snow vehicles looked very different from to days. But early over-the-snow, self-propelled vehicles were often quite capable of carrying passengers at good speed.

The first over-the-snow vehicles were built in the northern parts of the United States and Canada for practical work almost exclusively: hunting, trapping, logging, and transportation.

One vehicle, patented in 1895 by a Brooklyn inventor, R. H. Plass, was a sleigh with separate sets of runners’ front and back. It had two chain-driven wheels between, forced onto the snow by a large spring. There are no records to show how well this machine worked.

Alvin Lombard, a Maine man, invented an over-the-snow steam-powered log-hauler. Mary Anne debuted in 1900-1, and used a team of horses to steer her runners. Although not a snowmobile, Lombard's machine had tracks that constituted the first successful application of the "lag tread" to over-the-snow travel (lag treads are used, in modified form, in modern snowmobiles). Lombard replaced his horses with a geared-down steering device handled by a rugged lumberjack who sat out in the open on a wooden box set above the front runners. "Lombards" were used to haul sled loads of wood out of the forests for twenty years. In the 1920s they were converted to gasoline. They eventually evolved into bulldozer-like machines for winter woods use.

Another early inspiration was the "sleigh mobile," built in 1910, in Karlstad, Minnesota, by Gilbertson, the town blacksmith. It had an auto engine, a wooden chassis that looked like a soapbox cart body, a spiked wheel, two runners behind, and a single steering runner in front. It could run on snow, dry roads, and grass at speeds of 45 to 50 mph.

Raymond B. Kuhl, in 1911, put together a used motor, steering post, and radiator from a 1906 Model T Ford; wide-rimmed wagon wheels from Sears, Roebuck; wooden runners; and a direct drive, for a successful one-shot snow vehicle.

Virgil D. White of New Hampshire made a "snowmobile attachment" for a Model T Ford to convert it for over-the-snow use. He marketed it in 1922. The front wheels of the Model T were replaced by skis, and an additional pair of wheels were added to the rear. A traction belt was placed over two wheels on each side

FORD'S CONTRIBUTION

The Ford Motor Company put out an official special adaptation for their car in 1928. It put skis up front where the wheels had been, left the back wheels the same, and added an additional set of wheels in front of them. An endless drive belt encircled both sets of wheels. This adaptation was tried by Admiral Byrd on his polar expedition (1928-29), but about a hundred miles from camp it coughed, seized up, and shuddered to a stop. The Ford Motor Company decided that the snow machines had no commercial value and stopped making them.

Before 1930, then, no one had really addressed himself to the problem of making a mass-produced over-the-snow vehicle cheaply, for recreation. The evolution of the recreational snowmobile becomes a more definite progression in the struggles of two men: Carl Eliason and Joseph-Armand Bombardier.

Eliason, blacksmith and outboard motor dealer, made his first "motor toboggan" in 1917 in Sayner, Wisconsin. By 1922-26 he had perfected a practical machine and turned out forty of them in that five-year period, all by hand, himself. Eliason used a 2.5-hp outboard motor for power and a metal frame body. He steamed the wooden skis into shape over a bathtub. He patented his invention in 1927, and by 1932 had introduced an improved model: It was bigger, sturdier, and using a converted motorcycle engine-could go to 40 miles per hour.

He never managed to market his machines on a broad basis, but Eliason is credited for having contributed convincing proof that a relatively reliable self-propelled over-the snow vehicle could be manufactured on a sustained production basis. He created, as well, a basic engineering design that served as a prototype for other manufacturers. Eliason's machines were reliable: There are some of them still in use in the Midwest, and Eliason himself is alive and well and now a dealer for the Evinrude Motors' Skeeter.

BOMBARDIER OF CANADA

Joseph-Armand Bombardier really was the "father of snowmobiles," the first man to design and market a large number of snowmobiles while continually evolving new designs.

Born in Valcourt, Quebec, by age ten Bombardier had shown an aptitude for inventions. He'd taken an old clock and made a working tractor model out of it. He had also built a small boat with a workable paddle wheel, and a steam-generating plant that is said to have been strong enough to work his aunt's spinning wheel.

He spent so much time tinkering with the family's Model T Ford that his father gave up and bought him his own second-hand car to play with. At age fifteen, Bombardier made and tried out his first snow vehicle, an "air sled," powered by a Ford engine that drove a large airplane propeller. It was steered by front-end skis. The propeller was eventually replaced by powered tracks.

Some impetus for Bombardier's continuing efforts must have come from the Quebec winter. Roads clogged and stayed clogged. People stayed indoors for weeks and weeks. Bombardier had a lot of motivation to invent something to get him out of the house during the winter months-if he was anything like today's teenagers.

By the time Bombardier had graduated from high school in Sherbrooke and returned to Valcourt-where he opened a garage he had a pretty good snowmobile designed. He married and, in 1934, one of his sons died of appendicitis because the snowmobile Bombardier was then testing was too small to take his son to the hospital forty miles away. Bombardier's snowmobile project turned into an obsession: He was determined to make a good, reliable, over-the-snow vehicle for emergency snow transport.

In 1936, Bombardier sold his first commercial snowmobile. It had a plywood body, rubber tracks driven by a sprocket, and a spring suspension, which gave a smooth ride and improved the traction. It had an enclosed wood cabin and was quite large. A big engine was required at that time. The weight of a heavy engine had to be spread out over a large surface or the vehicle would have sunk like a boulder into the snow.

In the next few years, Bombardier developed a steel body to replace the wood one, and improved the suspension and over-the-snow flotation of the vehicle by using more track wheels.

The first really large-scale production of Bombardier vehicles came during the Second World War when the Canadian Army wanted something to use against the Nazis in Norway. Bombardier designed the "B-1," an armored over-the-snow vehicle with a flexible suspension system and wide rubberized tracks with good traction and very low "ground pressure."

In 1942, Bombardier incorporated as Bombardier Snowmobile Ltd., and in the postwar years he developed and patented the twelve toothed rubber sprocket, the same design used today to provide drive in most snowmobiles. He also branched out into the J-5 Tractor, which replaced the traditional horse in logging operations, and the Muskeg Tractor, a large vehicle for use by oil explorers in western Canada. It was able to traverse snow, swamp, and the spongy, water-logged soil known in the Canadian Northwest as "muskeg."     

The development of lightweight two-cycle engines in the 1950's made it possible for Bombardier to make smaller and therefore less expensive snowmobiles

Bombardier launched his first successful mass-produced small snowmobile, Ski-Doo, in 1959. (Contrary to some reports, Bombardier never called his snowmobiles Ski-Dogs; That name was given to only one prototype, which was tested in the North by a friend of Bombardier's who was living there. The brand name was Ski-Doo from the very start.)

Bombardier's Ski-Doo snowmobile had a small, sleek body and sturdy, solid wheels. The driver sat astride the machine, which meant he had better balance and control over it. Besides a strong rubber track, he had under him a good, flexible suspension system.

Another important development was Bombardier's reinforced all-rubber track with internal steel rods for crosswise strength. The original arrangement of the parts of a snowmobile that was developed by Bombardier (skis, gas tank, engine, and then the drive assembly) is still being used by him and others. The 1959 Ski-Doo machine was a culmination, then, of many years of work, trial, change, and modification. The machine cost $1,000 plus tax, and Bombardier sold 225 of them.

U.S. MANUFACTURERS

While Bombardier was developing his hold on the market in Canada, an American manufacturer was selling out his share in a firm producing snowmobiles: Edgar Hetteen. Hetteen reached only as far as the eighth grade in the Minnesota school system, but he was the founder of two of the biggest modern snowmobile companies in the United States: Arctic Enterprises and Polaris. In 1945, he started the Hetteen Hoist and Derrick Company which, as he put it, "built anything that anybody wanted." Ten years later, one of his partners, his brother-in-law, and his brother Allan Hetteen built a power sled on order for a local man. The company built five more "Autoboggans" that year and 75 the next. In 1959, Edgar sold out his share of the company, which was to become Polaris Industries, to his brother. In 1961 he founded a new           company and designed a new snowmobile, which he called Arctic Cat-selling 25 of them in the first year. Eight years later, Arctic Cat stock shares, which were worth $1 each in 1961, were selling at $85, and Hetteen sold out again.

In 1962, in the small town of La Pocatiere outside Quebec, three men were working on a snowmobile prototype: Jean Yves Bilanger, C. E. Bouchard, and Raoul Pelletier. They produced and sold 15 snowmobiles that first year and 210 the next, turning a former vegetable-cutting machine factory into Moto-Ski, which is one of the big ten today.

There are now more than a hundred companies producing snowmobiles in the United States and Canada. Thirteen years after the first Bombardier, more than 1,600,000 snowmobiles had been sold in North America.

GROWTH FACTORS

The biggest factors in this growth are the tremendous increase in leisure time available to the average man and the tremendous increase in disposable income. The surge of snowmobiling also resulted from the increased crowding in traditional vacation spots during traditional seasons, and from the increased mobility-of Americans. Concurrently, Americans' acceptance and eager embrace of the concept of "leisure vehicles" such as second cars, motorcycles, beach buggies, all-terrain vehicles, powerboats, camper trucks, and minibikes is a factor.

When you're living in a city you have more impetus to get into the outdoors in your free time-even in the winter-and there are more people living in cities and suburbs now than there were twenty years ago.

Finally, people change jobs frequently today. The traditional vacation home is harder to have if you're going to be transferred every two years or so; it makes sense to spend your recreational dollar on something you can take with you.

The snowmobile fills a new need for adventure; many people today spend their working time at dull, repetitious jobs that do not provide challenge or excitement.