When was the first snowmobile created

Photo taken in The snowmobile developed from several innovations that took place over more than a decade. Joseph-Armand Bombardier , a mechanic from Valcourt, Quebec , developed a propeller-driven sled in This was the first of many vehicles that could travel over snow. Carl Eliason of Wisconsin patented a motor toboggan in This design made the vehicle practical.

In , Bombardier patented his seven-passenger B7 snowmobile. The first buyers included doctors, ambulance drivers and priests living in remote areas. The market soon expanded to a wide range of businesses and services. In , Bombardier developed the passenger B12 model. He then designed vehicles used in the Second World War. By , more than 2, B12s had been made. Bombardier patented many other improvements to make the snowmobile more reliable. These included suspension and transmission systems.

In , Bombardier built a prototype for a small snowmobile with a lighter engine. Production of this recreational model began the next year under the Ski-Doo trademark. Around that same period, Adolphe Kegresse of France produced the Kegresse track, a continuous caterpillar track with a belt.

This happened between and Bombardier made his own version of the caterpillar track that was more adept to handling humid snow and dry snow alike. He called his snowmobile the B-7, which went into production in The B-7 was followed up by the B in , which had room for 12 people! Erickson made the vehicle. The motor-bob consisted of an Indian motorcycle with an aft, sled-runner fores, seating, and a cowl cover. The Indian Motorcycle brand was founded in and went defunct in The Ford Model T is one of the most renowned historic cars, produced between and It was priced more affordably than other vehicles at the time, so more people owned it.

That includes Wisconsinites, who took the Model T, attached skis at the front and rear tractor treads in the back, and began using the resulting vehicle as some form of snowmobile. Check out this image to see what we mean.

That was an early Bombardier snowmobile. You know and love Polaris snowmobiles today, but the first models were weighty, around 1, pounds. They could also go 20 miles per hour at their fastest! Eliason, a blacksmith and dealer of our modern outboard motors, modified a 2.

Steam for water boiling in the family washtub formed the wooden skis. He averaged 8 machines a winter and still found time to experiment with projected improvements. The company was founded two years earlier in Roseau, Minnesota.

In , the company begins producing the Autoboggan, a massive form of snowmobile. By , the company had created its first two-stroke engine.