Traveling Back: Tinkerer's invention in 1939 revolutionizes snow removal

Robert Johnson
Special to USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

It was February 1939. Something strange and exciting was taking place in Sawyer. A crowd had been gathering around John Anderson's Electric Shop on First Street to see what John was up to.

The gathering of the curious was nothing new on First Street, and the group always found something to marvel at when they visited the Electric Shop. You see, John Anderson was known as a tinkerer, a man with the ability to create something from nothing, or at least something from a lot of stray parts, and he was good at it.

In the past, he had come forth with numerous useful gadgets, the products of his inventive mind that never ceased working in its spare time. Every community has at least one resident that can see a need and has the creative ability to fill it. In Sawyer’s case, it was John Anderson.

This time, however, Anderson was inventing more than a simple gadget. It was a full-sized sidewalk snow plow employing the rotary principle — a plan that was going to save many a man’s back.

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It had been a snowy winter, so by mid-February, John had shoveled more snow than he wanted to, and he set out to solve the problem.

Taking a Model A Ford engine, he built around it, designing practically every part himself with a few exceptions. The two front drive wheels were salvaged from a Model T. The rear pivot wheel was taken from a rubber-tired wheelbarrow, the drive shaft and differential also came from a Model T, and the lift for the plow was an ordinary hydraulic car jack.

Some of the machining was done at the Bob Simon shop in Sturgeon Bay; otherwise, everything was made by the inventor himself.

Working on a three-wheel suspension, the little plow, just wide enough to fit a sidewalk, could turn quickly at the push of the steering lever using a radius of only 5 feet. In ordinary use it could push into drifts, suck them up and blow them away while moving at a speed of 1 to 4 miles an hour, depending on the depth of the snow.

By working back and forth, the plow could clear an entire parking area, so John felt his invention would be especially useful in such places as car lots and filling station driveways. It could go most anywhere but up the front steps. Even in town, people started to catch on to the invention and were calling for its services.

Besides being handy for plowing snow, the "tractor" part of the machine could very easily be adapted to push a golf course lawn mower or a slusher for moving loose dirt, John suggested.

In the middle of February, John Anderson’s creation seemed to fill a need previously filled by strong backs and stronger arms as individuals removed snow. John wasn’t sure at the time if there would be a market for his invention. Little did he known how desperately everyone would want it.