John Deere Entrepreneur

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Enterprise Project-John Deere as an Entrepreneur 13-01-2012 In my opinion John Deere, was an entrepreneur with a brilliant idea which has shaped the progress of many things in our world today. John Deere was born in Rutland, Vermont, February 7th 1804. He spent his childhood and adolescent years in Middlebury, Vermont, where he attended a common school and served a four-year apprenticeship learning the blacksmith's trade. The real history of the massive John Deere Company starts in 1837. In that year a 33-year-old pioneer blacksmith designed and made a ‘self-polishing’ steel plough in his small blacksmiths shop in Illinois. This was made from a broken saw blade and John saw that the plough was capable of slicing through thick, sticky prairie soil efficiently without becoming stuck. As it cut the furrow it became polished and this ensured that the soil would not stick. It was a major breakthrough in farming technology and became the first commercially successful steel plough in America. The plough was fundamental in opening the American Midwest to agriculture and ensured high levels of crop production which was extremely important at…show more content…
In 1962, an archaeological team from the University of Illinois unearthed the exact location of the blacksmith’s shop where John Deere developed his first successful steel plough in 1837. The location has been preserved in an exhibition hall which shows artefacts that were found and how the site would have looked when John Deere was present, enhanced with the sound of horse’s hooves on the treadmill, hammers on the anvil and conversations between workers. It was in a place such as this that John Deere invented the first self-polishing steel plough which opened the prairie to
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