This Is How Case Was Able to Grow Over the Course of 170 Years
The founder of the initial company – Racine Threshing Machine Works, was named Jerome Increase Case. The Wisconsin-based facility was established in 1842. Five years later, a man named Cyrus McCormick created his own establishment, thus the McCormick Harvesting Machine Companywas born. It evolved into International Harvesterin 1902. In the next couple of decades, the two individual companies were able to grow significantly. Case was able to create a system that separated the grain and the straw, while McCormick improved the reaper’s functionality.
The Early Years
Case introduced a novelty in 1869 when he unveiled the steam engine tractor his company had been developing for a few years. However, it was not self-propelled and it was merely a power source for the rest of the field machinery.
Disaster struck a couple of years later and McCormick’s plant was burnt to the ground during the Great Chicago Fire. Case stepped in and offered to cooperate. Just five years later the company built their first self-propelled tractor, but it was still dependent on horses – the engine had to be steered by a horse carriage.
A huge step forward was Case’s first ever tractor equipped with a gasoline engine introduced in 1892, but the market proved to be hard to accept the idea of such a machine that was not steam-powered. The gasoline-powered tractor entered the market 19 years later.
The Future-Shaping Models
International Harvester introduced an impressively huge tractor in 1910 called the Case Titan, and that pretty much paved the road ahead when it comes to the production of big tractors.
The Case Farmall – a cleverly designed small tractor with multiple attachments for harvesting, cultivation and plowing, was introduced in 1923. Thirteen years later, International Harvester introduced the distinctive red color as the new feature of their product line. The company redesigned the Case Farmall in 1939 and there were three different sizes of the machine’ second generation available for purchase.
The first cotton picker was shown in 1943 and it was even preserved to this day – it is currently located at the Smithsonian Museum. Exactly 15 years later, the Steiger family introduced a tractor which had a lot more power than the traditional machines, and it went into production in 1963.
The Case Axial Flow Combine was a groundbreaking model which basically improved every typical aspect of a combine. The four-wheel drive and articulated tractors went into production in the beginning of the 80s. The engineers decided to place the driver’s seat at the back of the machine when designing these new models. The model range included the 4994 model featuring a 400-horespower V8 engine equipped with a turbocharger.
The Merge
Case IH was officially founded after Case and International Harvester merged into the second biggest agricultural machinery manufacturer in the world. Steiger becomes part of the company in 1987, and soon the first tractor model developed entirely after Case and International Harvester joined forces was unveiled – the Case Magnum. In 1989, the Case Maxxus was added to the product portfolio – it was a powerful, yet economical machine which had unmatched serviceability and agility.
Case IH celebrated 150 years of successful growth in 1992. The following years were marked by the introduction of the monitoring technology called the Advanced Farming Systems (AFS was launched as a service in 1995) and later sprayers were added to the company’s range of products. The Case Austoft sugar cane harvester was also unveiled in 1995 which was a major innovation. It allowed for much higher efficiency of the cane harvesting process and was a successful product developed by Case IH.
1996 was marked by the introduction of the Case Quadtrac tractor with a mighty 360-horsepower engine. The tractor was equipped with four tracks instead of wheels, hence the name. This provided the machine with much more traction than the rest of the tractor models. The Case MX Series Magnum was dubbed the best new product of the year in 1998 by Business Week, which was the best gift for Case IH’s 10th anniversary.
The New Technology
The Farmall brand returned to the market in 2003 with the all-new D Case and Case DX model lines. Three years later, another innovation was presented to the market. The Case Module Express 625 was a cotton picker which had a clever design allowing the machine to build modules during the harvesting process. By 2009 Case IH also developed the automatic transmissions for their tractors using the CVT technology. The SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction) technology was introduced in 2010. The new Case Magnum tractors featured the SCR catalytic converter which successfully reduced emissions and improved the performance of the machine while improving its fuel efficiency. The Farmall tractors celebrated their 90th year on the market in 2013.
Different Case tractors have won numerous Tractor of the Year awards over the years. Currently, the brand has a wide range of agricultural machinery to offer, such as planters, drills, cotton pickers, harvesters, cultivators, plows, mowers, blowers, balers, loaders and skid-steers.
More info at https://www.caseih.com/northamerica/en-us/home.