How it began
Joseph-Armand Bombardier built his first snow vehicle in 1922, at the age of 15, in Valcourt, Quebec. In the winter of 1934 his two-year-old son Yvon died of peritonitis. Bombardier kept working on a vehicle that could travel over snow. On December 19, 1936, he applied for a patent on a sprocket wheel and track system, his first major invention, and the patent office approved it on June 29, 1937. The first seven production machines, called the B7, left his new factory in the winter of 1936 to 1937.
How it works
The problem was to build a motor vehicle light enough to ride on snow, with an engine, traction and suspension suited to snow that keeps changing in consistency. Bombardier's answer was a toothed sprocket wheel, made of wood covered with rubber, that pulled a track of two rubber bands joined by steel cross-links. Solid wheels kept snow and ice from building up. He later made continuous tracks by a new vulcanizing process and an all-rubber sprocket.
Who pushed back
The market for large snowmobiles was undercut by road clearing. In the winter of 1948 to 1949, which also brought very little snow, the Quebec government adopted a policy requiring all rural routes to be cleared. Once roads were open to ordinary cars, the big machines were no longer needed. Sales fell by close to one million dollars in a single year, and the company turned to tracked industrial vehicles.
What changed first
The B7 carried seven passengers. In 1941 Bombardier completed the larger B12, patented on June 23, 1942, which seated twelve. His company built 2,817 of them between 1942 and 1951. They served as buses, ambulances and rescue vehicles, carried missionaries in the north, and were used to install and maintain power and telephone lines and at mining sites. A larger version took children to school in Quebec and Ontario.
Where it stands today
At the end of 1958 Bombardier and close collaborators built a prototype of a miniature snowmobile, tested in April 1959. Mass production of the Ski-Doo began that autumn. Output grew from 225 units in the first season to 8,352 in 1963 to 1964. It was taken up by missionaries, trappers, prospectors and surveyors and then for sport. The National Inventors Hall of Fame describes it as the first mass-produced snow machine. Bombardier died in 1964.
