1
00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:02,000
Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

2
00:00:02,080 --> 00:00:11,040
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,

3
00:00:11,080 --> 00:00:14,080
Speaker 1: a show that believes any times the right time to

4
00:00:14,200 --> 00:00:18,440
Speaker 1: learn about history. I'm Gay Bluzier, and today we're looking

5
00:00:18,480 --> 00:00:21,400
Speaker 1: at one of the great trailblazers in the winter sport

6
00:00:21,520 --> 00:00:26,360
Speaker 1: of snowmobiling. A wisconsinite looking for a faster, easier way

7
00:00:26,560 --> 00:00:34,760
Speaker 1: to go dashing through the snow. The day was November.

8
00:00:38,040 --> 00:00:42,400
Speaker 1: American inventor Carl Eliason received a patent for what he

9
00:00:42,520 --> 00:00:47,440
Speaker 1: called the motor toboggan. His idea for a vehicle designed

10
00:00:47,520 --> 00:00:50,720
Speaker 1: for snow travel not only created a new form of

11
00:00:50,760 --> 00:00:54,800
Speaker 1: winter recreation, it provided a much needed way for snowbound

12
00:00:54,840 --> 00:01:00,040
Speaker 1: communities to get around more easily. Eliason's motorized toboggan and

13
00:01:00,320 --> 00:01:03,960
Speaker 1: led directly to the creation of the modern snowmobile, a

14
00:01:04,040 --> 00:01:07,720
Speaker 1: contribution for which he was later inducted into the Snowmobile

15
00:01:07,840 --> 00:01:11,280
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame. And Yes, that is a real thing.

16
00:01:12,319 --> 00:01:16,839
Speaker 1: Carl J. E. Eliason was born in eighteen ninety nine

17
00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:20,200
Speaker 1: in northern Michigan. When he was ten years old, he

18
00:01:20,280 --> 00:01:23,600
Speaker 1: and his family moved to Saint Or, Wisconsin, a small

19
00:01:23,760 --> 00:01:27,360
Speaker 1: rural community in the town of Plumb Lake. Like many

20
00:01:27,480 --> 00:01:30,840
Speaker 1: kids in the region, Eliason took an interest in hunting

21
00:01:30,880 --> 00:01:35,160
Speaker 1: and trapping at an early age. Unfortunately, he'd been born

22
00:01:35,200 --> 00:01:37,840
Speaker 1: with a club foot, which made it difficult for him

23
00:01:37,880 --> 00:01:40,880
Speaker 1: to keep up with his friends, especially when trekking through

24
00:01:40,920 --> 00:01:44,280
Speaker 1: deep snow. At the time, his best option was to

25
00:01:44,319 --> 00:01:48,120
Speaker 1: wear snowshoes, but given his disability, those didn't make the

26
00:01:48,200 --> 00:01:53,280
Speaker 1: Upper Wisconsin winters many easier to navigate. By nine twenty one,

27
00:01:53,520 --> 00:01:57,600
Speaker 1: Eliason had started dreaming of a more elaborate solution, a

28
00:01:57,760 --> 00:02:01,800
Speaker 1: vehicle specially designed for the union challenges of snow travel.

29
00:02:02,440 --> 00:02:05,280
Speaker 1: To be clear, though, he wasn't the first person to

30
00:02:05,400 --> 00:02:08,800
Speaker 1: think of, or even to build a motorized snow vehicle.

31
00:02:09,280 --> 00:02:12,520
Speaker 1: In the northern US and Canada, people had been fashioning

32
00:02:12,600 --> 00:02:16,680
Speaker 1: makeshift snow vehicles out of Model ts since the nineteen tens.

33
00:02:17,000 --> 00:02:20,760
Speaker 1: Shortly after the car's introduction. They would remove the cars

34
00:02:20,840 --> 00:02:23,560
Speaker 1: undercarriage and then mount a pair of skis to the

35
00:02:23,600 --> 00:02:26,680
Speaker 1: front and a set of tracks to the rear. Those

36
00:02:26,680 --> 00:02:30,079
Speaker 1: converted cars were known as snow flyers, and they were

37
00:02:30,120 --> 00:02:33,680
Speaker 1: a godsend for rural residents, especially when it came to

38
00:02:33,760 --> 00:02:39,040
Speaker 1: mail delivery. During that era of experimentation. Several home mechanics

39
00:02:39,040 --> 00:02:44,640
Speaker 1: helped push the concept forward, including Joseph Bombardier in Quebec, Canada.

40
00:02:44,840 --> 00:02:47,919
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty two, when he was just fifteen years old,

41
00:02:48,240 --> 00:02:52,680
Speaker 1: Bombardier made his own prototype snowmobile, but rather than rigging

42
00:02:52,720 --> 00:02:55,160
Speaker 1: a model T to run on skis, as some of

43
00:02:55,200 --> 00:02:58,280
Speaker 1: his neighbors had done, he just mounted the car's engine

44
00:02:58,320 --> 00:03:02,200
Speaker 1: directly to a pair of sleds, and, as if that

45
00:03:02,240 --> 00:03:06,280
Speaker 1: weren't dangerous enough, he also attached a wooden propeller to

46
00:03:06,320 --> 00:03:08,359
Speaker 1: the back of the engine, right in front of the

47
00:03:08,440 --> 00:03:14,200
Speaker 1: driver's face. Despite these risky design choices, his contraption reportedly

48
00:03:14,200 --> 00:03:17,560
Speaker 1: worked well, and when Bombardier returned to the idea as

49
00:03:17,600 --> 00:03:20,720
Speaker 1: an adult, he found great success with it. In fact,

50
00:03:21,040 --> 00:03:25,040
Speaker 1: he's also in the Snowmobile Hall of Fame. At the

51
00:03:25,080 --> 00:03:29,080
Speaker 1: same time Bombardier was tinkering with his homemade rocket sled,

52
00:03:29,480 --> 00:03:33,320
Speaker 1: Carl Eliason, then in his early twenties, began work on

53
00:03:33,360 --> 00:03:37,440
Speaker 1: a more practical approach to traveling over snow. It took

54
00:03:37,520 --> 00:03:41,000
Speaker 1: him roughly two years to develop a working prototype, and

55
00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:43,600
Speaker 1: when it was finished, he tested it himself in the

56
00:03:43,600 --> 00:03:48,120
Speaker 1: woods around sain Or, Wisconsin. Eliason's vehicle consisted of a

57
00:03:48,200 --> 00:03:51,840
Speaker 1: long wooden toboggan that was fitted with two skis and

58
00:03:51,920 --> 00:03:55,760
Speaker 1: steered by ropes. It was pushed along by an endless

59
00:03:55,800 --> 00:03:59,920
Speaker 1: steel cleated track or caterpillar tread, which was powered by

60
00:04:00,120 --> 00:04:04,680
Speaker 1: small outboard boat motor. Although it wasn't the first motorized

61
00:04:04,680 --> 00:04:08,400
Speaker 1: snow vehicle, it was by far the most reliable and

62
00:04:08,640 --> 00:04:12,559
Speaker 1: user friendly. It was also the first to be mass produced.

63
00:04:13,440 --> 00:04:17,960
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty four, Eliason began selling hand built motorized

64
00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:21,880
Speaker 1: to Boggins in his hometown shop. Three years later, on

65
00:04:21,920 --> 00:04:25,920
Speaker 1: November twenty two, ninety seven, he was granted a patent

66
00:04:26,040 --> 00:04:29,240
Speaker 1: for his machine and began looking at ways to streamline

67
00:04:29,320 --> 00:04:32,719
Speaker 1: the maid to order process. Over the next decade and

68
00:04:32,760 --> 00:04:36,280
Speaker 1: a half, his company produced only a few dozen vehicles,

69
00:04:36,520 --> 00:04:39,000
Speaker 1: but at the start of World War Two, interest in

70
00:04:39,040 --> 00:04:43,840
Speaker 1: his product began to steadily rise. Eliason eventually caught word

71
00:04:43,880 --> 00:04:48,479
Speaker 1: of a large military order headed his way. Finland supposedly

72
00:04:48,480 --> 00:04:51,320
Speaker 1: wanted about two hundred of his vehicles to use in

73
00:04:51,400 --> 00:04:55,320
Speaker 1: combat operations, and the faster they could be made, the better.

74
00:04:56,279 --> 00:05:00,200
Speaker 1: Military interest convinced Eliason the demand for his product was

75
00:05:00,279 --> 00:05:04,119
Speaker 1: about to outpace his company's capacity. With that in mind.

76
00:05:04,200 --> 00:05:06,960
Speaker 1: He sold his patent to the Four Wheel Drive Auto

77
00:05:07,040 --> 00:05:11,400
Speaker 1: Company in Clintonville, Wisconsin. Their auto plant was able to

78
00:05:11,440 --> 00:05:15,200
Speaker 1: produce Toboggins on an assembly line, greatly reducing the time

79
00:05:15,200 --> 00:05:18,720
Speaker 1: it took to build them. The rumored order from Finland

80
00:05:18,760 --> 00:05:21,800
Speaker 1: never came through, but the U. S. Army did order

81
00:05:21,880 --> 00:05:25,560
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty motor to Boggin's for use in Alaska.

82
00:05:25,839 --> 00:05:28,800
Speaker 1: The entire fleet was painted white to blend in with

83
00:05:28,839 --> 00:05:34,680
Speaker 1: their surroundings. Eliason's patent changed hands again in ninety seven

84
00:05:34,800 --> 00:05:37,680
Speaker 1: when it was transferred to a Canadian subsidiary of the

85
00:05:37,680 --> 00:05:41,919
Speaker 1: Four Wheel Drive Company. Eliason's motor to Boggin's remained in

86
00:05:42,000 --> 00:05:45,200
Speaker 1: production there all the way until the early nineteen sixties.

87
00:05:45,640 --> 00:05:48,880
Speaker 1: By that point, his design had been widely copied and

88
00:05:48,960 --> 00:05:52,039
Speaker 1: gradually improved upon, with the result being the kind of

89
00:05:52,080 --> 00:05:56,560
Speaker 1: snowmobiles were used to seeing today. Carl Eliason refused to

90
00:05:56,640 --> 00:05:59,560
Speaker 1: let his disability slow him down, and because of his

91
00:05:59,600 --> 00:06:04,120
Speaker 1: tenet city winter became much more manageable and fun for

92
00:06:04,200 --> 00:06:10,160
Speaker 1: snow seekers around the world. I'm Gabe Bluesier, and hopefully

93
00:06:10,279 --> 00:06:13,080
Speaker 1: you now know a little more about history today than

94
00:06:13,160 --> 00:06:16,159
Speaker 1: you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep up with

95
00:06:16,200 --> 00:06:18,919
Speaker 1: the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and

96
00:06:18,960 --> 00:06:23,080
Speaker 1: Instagram at t d i HC Show, and if you

97
00:06:23,080 --> 00:06:26,000
Speaker 1: have any comments or suggestions, you can always send them

98
00:06:26,000 --> 00:06:30,360
Speaker 1: my way at this Day at I heart media dot com.

99
00:06:30,360 --> 00:06:33,039
Speaker 1: Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thanks

100
00:06:33,040 --> 00:06:35,400
Speaker 1: to you for listening. I'll see you back here again

101
00:06:35,480 --> 00:06:38,560
Speaker 1: tomorrow for another day in History class