The Y-VA engine was the first high compression, cold start, full diesel developed by Fairbanks-Morse without the acquisition of any foreign patent. The model Y was available in sizes from one through six cylinders, or 10 to 200 horsepower (150 kW). The company's larger Model Y semi-diesel became a standard workhorse, and sugar, rice, timber, and mine mills used the engine. The Company also had brief forays into building automobiles, tractors, cranes, televisions, radios and refrigerators, but output was small in these fields.Īfter the expiration of Rudolf Diesel's American licence in 1912, Fairbanks entered the large engine business. The model Z found favour with farmers, and the Model N was popular in stationary industrial applications. Over a half million units were produced in the following 30 years. The Z was soon made in sizes up to 20 horsepower (15 kW).
In 1914 the company began production of the Model Z single cylinder engine in one, three and six horsepower sizes.
Fairbanks-Morse powerplants evolved by burning kerosene in 1893, coal gas in 1905, then to semi- diesel engines in 1913 and to full diesel engines in 1924. Small lighting plants built by the company were popular. The Fairbanks-Morse gas engine was a success with farmers, and irrigation, electricity generation, and oilfield work also benefited from these engines. The Company began producing oil and naptha engines in the 1890s (one-cylinder hot-tube engines). The company became an industrial supplier distributing complete "turn-key" systems: tools, plumbing, gauges, gaskets, parts, valves and pipe. It grew to include typewriters, hand trucks, railway velocipedes, pumps, tractors and a variety of warehouse and bulk shipping tools. In the late nineteenth century business expanded in the Western United States, as did the company's catalog. (Consider using more specific cleanup instructions.) Please help improve this article if you can. This article may require cleanup to meet Tractor Wiki's quality standards. Fairbanks first came to Montreal, Canada, in 1876 and later opened a factory there. Headquartered in Chicago, all Canadian and American cities had branch dealerships of Fairbanks-Morse. As a result, Morse later became a partner and the firm was subsequently renamed Fairbanks-Morse & Company by the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Included in this, Morse brought Wheeler, and his Eclipse Windmill pumps, into business with the Fairbanks company. At about the same time, Fairbanks & Co employee Charles Hosmer Morse opened an office of Fairbanks & Co in Chicago, from which he expanded the company's territory of operation and widened its product line. Soon half a million windmills dotted the landscape on farms throughout the West and as far away as Australia. Wheeler designed a durable windmill for pumping water, the "Eclipse Windmill." Wheeler set up shop in Beloit just after the US Civil War. Fairbanks was the leading manufacturer in the US - and the best known the world over - until Henry Ford stole that crown. Fairbanks scales won 63 medals over the years in international competition. Scales were integral to business as marine and railway shippers charged by weight. That device was patented in June 1832, and a generation later, the E & T Fairbanks & Company was selling thousands of scales first in the United States, later in Europe, South America and even Imperial China. Though unsuccessful in fabrication for fibre factories, another invention by Thaddeus, the platform scale, formed the basis for the great enterprise. In 1829 he started in a hemp dressing business for which he built the machinery. Johnsbury, Vermont, to manufacture two of his patented inventions, a cast iron plow (plough UK) and a heating stove.
Fairbanks, Morse & Company had its beginning in 1823 when inventor Thaddeus Fairbanks began an ironworks in St.