Who Invented The Snow Blower?

It snowed enough on Sunday to close the local schools on Monday. For our town, it was an extended vacation, since the kids were out all of last week on Winter Break.

It took a couple of hours yesterday for me to clear the driveway and sidewalks. It finally stopped snowing during the evening, and I assumed that I would not have to do any more clearing on Monday. But the city cleared the road early Monday morning, and it was as if they dumped everything from the road back onto my driveway. Snow on my lower driveway was more than waist deep, and several feet taller than my snow blower. I kept nibbling around the edges of the snow pile with the snow blower, and eventually got it all clear.

Fortunately, I have a snow blower. For those of us in the north country, this is one of the greatest inventions of all time. It scares me to think of doing this job without my Toro.

It also made me wonder – who invented the snow blower?

With the wonders of the internet, it didn’t take long to discover that the snow blower was invented by Canadian Arthur Sicard. Sicard grew up on a Quebec dairy farm. There were many times in Quebec winters when the roads were impassible and his family couldn’t get milk to market. At the times, threshers – machines with rotating blades –were being used to harvest wheat. Sicard decided to use the same mechanism to clear snow.

Sicard spent, of and on, decades trying to make a workable snow blower. He finally succeeded in 1925. By then, stronger gasoline engines could make his idea work.

His first snow blower was built on a four-wheel drive truck chassis. In place of a front bumper, the contraption had two rotating blades in a housing, with a scoop in the front. The driver could clear and toss snow into the back of the truck, or throw it more than 90 feet away. Sicard sold his first snow blower to Outrmont, near Montreal, in 1927.

 This first snow blower was honored on a Canadian postage stamp, shown on the top of the page.