Dingee Obituary

This article appeared in The Case Eagle Magazine, Volume 3, Number 8, June 1919

With the passing away of W. W. Dingee at his home in Chicago, Sunday, May 25th, 1919, the implement industry and especially the threshing machine section of the same, loses one of its oldest and best known figures. Mr. Dingee will be remembered as perfecting the horse-power which bears his name.

He was born in Philadelphia, January 5, 1831 and was a son of Mr. Abediah and Mrs. Hannah Welch Dingee. He was educated in his native state and until 1863 was associated with A. B. Farquhar of York, Pa., in the manufacture of threshing machines.

Came to Racine

In 1863 he moved to Racine, Wis., where he established the Geiser Threshing Machine Co. This shop was destroyed by fire and Mr. Dingee moved to Oshkosh and was connected with the Sawyer Manufacturing Company. When the J. I. Case Company purchased the Sawyer plant in 1878, he came to Racine as a Case man and remained a Case man as long as he was active in business.

In 1906 he retired from active business and moved- to Chicago to spend his declining years. Mr. Dingee was a very quiet man and possessed a great force of character, strong determination, and a keen love of justice. He was a student in every sense of the word and many improvements on the modern thresher can be traced directly to his fertile brain.

In 1886 he joined the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. By his genial, kindly nature he made many friends and was always regarded as a valued citizen of the community. He is survived by his widow and one daughter, Miss Gertrude Dingee, who is a lecturer at the University of Chicago.

He was buried at Mound Cemetery, Racine, Wis., May 28th. Many of the officials of the Case - T. M. Co. and other old friends attended the funeral.

A Letter to the American Thresherman

In 1911 Mr. Dingee wrote a letter to B. B. Clark editor of the American Thresherman, which was published in that periodical. It throws many interesting side-lights on the work and character of this very interesting personality. The letter is as follows:

To the Editor: -
Since coming to Chicago, five years ago, some friend has kindly sent me the American Thresherman, which after reading, with much other literature, I save for the Salvation Army, who say that "All is fish which come into their net." It is the only publication I receive with a thread in the wrapper- a convenience which I am sure all your subscribers appreciate. There is no better illustration of the improvements in farm machinery and implements in the fifty years in which I was connected with the business, than The American Thresherman itself, with its wealth of reading matter, and its picture gallery of illustrated advertisements.
From 1852 to 1863 I was in the threshing machine business in York, Pennsylvania. During the war, the shops were burned, and I came west to introduce the Geiser threshers, leaving my apprentice and later my partner, A. B. Farquhar, to keep the business going. I notice the advertisement of this same A. B. Farquhar in the last issue. He is one of the captains of industry, of whom his adopted city,- one of the meeting places of the Colonial Congress during the Revolution,- may well be proud.

Worked with J. I. Case
On the 8th of February, 1863, I arrived at Racine, Wisconsin, with the castings for a few of the Geiser machines which were erected at the shops of J. I. Case, who up to that date had run his business alone. This was the beginning of a friendship that ended only with his death in 1891. We were both in love with the threshing machine business, and worked together for its betterment, sharing bed and board in many a frontier settlement, where unusual conditions were to be found for testing machinery. He from long experience was the better field operator, and I the better mechanic. Those were the horse-power days, and he was a born horseman, while I could hardly tell a horse from an ox.

The Dingee Horse Power
The Carey and Climax horse power gave way to the Dingee, and later all kinds of horse powers went down before the all-conquering steam engines. The Geiser, altho having many good points, was a poor seller in those days.
The Apron and Eclipse machine were not well adapted to steam power and were superseded by the Agitator, upon which one of the patents was issued to me. This was the fore-runner of the "all steel Case."
Threshing machinery has been so overloaded with parasites in the shape of attachments of one kind and another, that I wonder how they are moved, kept in running order or even paid for.
To my many co-laborers in this great industry, including users of threshing machinery, say that I have not forgotten them. That in my seventy-fifth year I. retired from work and have since been living in the shadow of the great University of Chicago, attending such lectures as interest me, and resting from my labors.
I will close by relating a story of my personal experience showing how difficult it is to separate grain from straw. In the year 1860, while living on the lake shore at Racine, I bought a small load of oat straw, which was drawn ten miles over a rough road, thrown off in the street, and wheeled to a strawberry-bed, upon which it was thinly spread as a mulch. After lying all winter, subject to the winds from the lake, it was raked off in the spring, thrown down a bank, and there was still enough oats in the straw to raise a crop.
W. W. Dingee,
Chicago, Ill.

(The above interesting letter is from the Grand Old Man, who gave to the threshing machine world the Dingee horse power and the Agitator Separator, besides many other useful inventions in threshing machinery, and whose brain helped solve some of the most perplexing problems of the business. Brother Dingee is one of nature's noblemen, and we doubt if he has an enemy in the world. -The Editor.)

W. W. DINGEE ---- INVENTOR OF HORSE-POWER DIES

Came to Racine

A Letter to the American Thresherman

Worked with J. I. Case

The Dingee Horse Power