Andreas Stihl

Andreas Stihl (10 November 1896 in Zürich, Switzerland – 14 January 1973 in Rohrbronn, Baden-Württemberg, Germany) was a Swiss-born German engineer and important inventor in the area of chainsaws, and the founder of Andreas Stihl AG & Company KG.[1] He is often hailed as the "Father of the chainsaw".[2]

Stihl went to the Volksschule in Zürich, before moving to relatives in Germany.[2] He attended the Realschule in Singen (Baden-Württemberg) and the Gymnasium in Düsseldorf-Oberkassel. From 1915 until his dismissal by injuries in 1917, Stihl fought in the First World War in the German Army.[2] From 1917 until 1920, he studied mechanical engineering in Eisenach. In 1923, together with his friend Carl Hohl, he founded an engineering firm in Stuttgart, which was dissolved in 1926.[3]

Stihl founded a new company, for steam boiler prefiring systems in the same year in Stuttgart.[1] He also patented the "Cutoff Chainsaw for Electric Power" in 1926, which weighed a hefty 64 kilograms and had a one-inch gauge chain with handles at either end. Due to its bulk, it required two people to operate.[4] It was, however, the first electric chainsaw worldwide.[5] In 1929, Stihl built a petrol powered chainsaw, named the "tree-felling machine", two years after fellow German Emil Lerp had built the first one worldwide.[6] The following year, Stihl created the first ever chainsaw that could be operated by only one person.[7] The company continued to grow and in 1931 it became the first European company to export chainsaws to the United States and the Soviet Union.[8] During the Nazi regime, Stihl was member of the Nazi Party.[2]

Since 1971, Stihl is the biggest chainsaw manufacturing company in the world.[2] Andreas Stihl had four children with his first wife, among them Hans Peter Stihl (born 1932) and Eva Mayr-Stihl (born 1935), who succeeded her father in managing the company and remaining Vorstand until 2002.[9]