Copper Hopper: Crabb Gas Engine Co. — A History

It happened in West Union, Iowa. Just two blocks from the city square and courthouse, on Union Street. The unique, copper hoppered Crabb engine was created in 1909. After standing outside all winter in freezing cold, it was announced to the world. Finally, a solution had been invented that would prevent damage to engines from freezing water! 

Isaiah Crabb, an experienced sawyer, had bought an established sawmill business in West Union a year earlier. Newly married, and wanting to bolster his income, he took on the agency for three makers of cars and went into the automobile repairing business. 

Then Isaiah hit upon an idea that he believed would revolutionize the booming market for power on farms. This was in a time before electricity had come to farms, so power was provided by single cylinder gasoline engines. Farms needed power to run their equipment all throughout the year. Engines used water to keep them cool, but if left in the engine when not in use, the water would freeze and break the iron castings, rendering the engine often inoperable. Antifreeze as we know it today, would not come into use until the mid 1920s and later. Preventing freeze damage was a problem needing solution. 

The unique solution, Isaiah's invention, was to make the tank for the cooling water from a material that would flex, but not break. The cooling tank - the hopper - was fashioned from sheet copper. The engine with a distinctive copper hopper was a novel and new idea in the market of gas engines. A patent was applied for and Isaiah began building engines.

This is the story of Isaiah Crabb's journey. An intriguing story of the hard work required to be a start up manufacturer of gasoline engines in small town Iowa. It is a story with many challenges, and fits and starts, as Isaiah seeks fortune and fame with the unique copper hoppered Crabb engine.