In many ways, Adolph Ronning was a typical Minnesota farm boy. One of nine children, he grew up on a farm near Boyd, in Lac qui Parle County, and graduated from Dawson High School in 1912. He took violin lessons in school, tinkered with his family’s farm equipment and used some of his free time to earn extra money.
But, unlike many rural teens, Ronning wasn’t saving up for a set of wheels or a bus ticket to the big city. His earnings funded a patent application for his ensilage harvester, which he had started designing at age seven. He was 19 years old when he and his brother, Andrean, filed the patent and it was the first of dozens he was to receive throughout his life, all with the goal of making mechanical work easier and more efficient.
The ensilage harvester improved on standard practices for harvesting and storing crops. Its basic design, large unmodified, is still used by agricultural implement companies worldwide. The Ronnings’ machine cuts corn, grinds it into silage and stores it in a side or rear drawn wagon as the field is harvested. When the wagon is full, it is detached from the harvester and pulled to a silo, where a mechanism propels the silage up and into the silo. Meanwhile, wagon is attached to the harvester so that the cutting and grinding can continue.
Adolph Ronning sooon moved to Minneapolis, where he founded a company to make and sell ensilage harvesters and other machines, including a power road grader. In 1925, he sold his business to International American Harvester Company of Minneapolis. The following year, he sold some of his tractor patents to International Harvester, including one for what the company dubbed the “Farmall System of Horseless Farming.” After that, he later recalled, “I had more time to myself.”
His inventiveness was seemingly boundless and for a 50-year period, beginning in 1913, Ronninga second had a continuous succession of patents pending. His brainstorms ranged from headlight dimmers to tractor-powered golf course mowers (sold to Toro Corporation) to a stick power control for army tanks.
