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The History of Snowmobiles
 The
history of snowmobile development in North America is an adventure
true to the pioneering spirit. The inspiration of the beauty and
popular recreations of winter spawned this new sport, and now snowmobiling
is more popular than ever before. The first snowmobiles, from the
early 1900s to 1960 and beyond, where often just experimental in
design and construction—there were not many people who rode
snowmobiles then, ot had even heard of them before. But this amusing
and relentless experimentation led the way to a blending of hi-tech
engineering and unbelievable power we see in snowmobiles today.
The snowmobiles currently on the market, as well as models from
recent years are designed especially with comfort, safety and reliability
in mind.
Seventy-five years ago, the attempts to design vehicles that would
move powerfully, run by motor. They would travel on runners, the
original designers decided. Many inventors had always dreamed of
building a power-driven sled to be an instrument of amusement and
adventure often in the places where heavy snowfalls would mean the
difference between life and death in other winter sports—or
when transporting an ill or injured person to emergency care from
the snowy mountains or thickly snow-covered plains.
A snowmobile was first designed and built in 1935 using skis in
front and a sprocket wheel and tracked system in back. This machine
could carry twelve people. Its design was purposed more towards
business than pleasure, so to speak. Doctors, veterinarians, ambulance
and taxi drivers were first in line to purchase these snowmobiles,
but there were also families interested in buying them for transportation
in the winter months. Next came snowmobiles of slightly different
design, made to carry much more weight—and quickly found a
market in the logging industry.
It was not until the late 1950s when smaller gasoline engines were
designed and had become popular, before the one- or two-passenger
lightweight chassis snowmobile was marketed. This was the time in
snowmobile history that snowmobiling as a recreational sport was
began.
Ten years later, dozens of manufacturers produced snowmobiles for
resorts and recreation, which were sold for a few hundred dollars
a piece. Such snowmobiles today are practically historical artifacts.
In our era manufacturers produce well over 200,000 snowmobiles annually
in the United States, Canada and Europe. Now there are over four-million
snowmobile riders. Snowmobiling has be come an ever-increasing major
winter sport and a significant factor in increased winter tourism
in much of Canada and the snowbelt of the United States. The recreation
of snowmobiling is developing so quickly, I can see it soon becoming
a main Olympic attraction.
The history of the snowmobile continues. Improvements on the technology
of the snowmobile, because of advanced sciences ever-expanding,
are by far not yet completed. Today's snowmobile hardly resembles
the historical, earlier models. By the standards of the market today,
many of the snowmobiles designed in the 1960s and 1970s are sold
or shown only as antiques.
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