175 YEARS OF AN AGRICULTURAL GIANT
1st March 2017
It was 175 years ago, in 1842, that expansively named Jerome Increase Case established the Racine Threshing Machine Works in Wisconsin to produce a revolutionary machine that would speed up the separation of grain after harvest.
As steam engines quickly replaced horses for threshing, the J I Case Threshing Machine Company became the world’s largest producer of engines by 1886. In 1902, five companies merged to form the International Harvester Company in Chicago, the deal being brokered by American banker J P Morgan.
The company produced its first combine harvester in 1915 and in 1923 introduced the ‘Farmall’, the world’s first row-crop tractor. International Harvester sold more than five million Farmall tractors and in 1977 launched the unique single-rotor Axial-Flow rotary combine, which revolutionised the farming industry with its simplicity, grain quality, grain steam savings, crop adaptability, matched capacity and high resale value. Axial-Flow combines still set the standard for harvesting performance today.
Case IH was formed in 1985 when J I Case acquired the agricultural division of International Harvester, uniting the legacies of Case and IH in a single brand. Its first product, the Magnum tractor from 160hp to 240hp, was introduced in 1987 and became the first tractor to win the Industrial Design Excellence Award.
T H WHITE added the Case IH brand to its offering in 2006.
