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Artifact Articles: Ask the Man Who Owns One
Geiser Manufacturing Company
 By Collections Curator Ruth Bitner
July/August 2007
Geiser engine at the Saskatoon WDM.
WDM Archives
Back in the early 1850s, Peter Geiser of Smithburg, Maryland
made history when he built his first thresher. Some say he was
the inventor of the threshing machine and his name should be as
familiar as John Deere’s or Cyrus McCormick’s of reaper fame.1
Competitors were not long getting on the thresher bandwagon, but
Geiser beat them in 1855 competitions. With his success, other
companies got interested in negotiating manufacturing rights.2 In
1860, Geiser moved his operation to Waynesboro, Pennsylvania and
set up shop to build threshers. George Frick, Geiser’s neighbour
from Maryland, had also moved to Waynesboro and the companies
founded by these men were closely connected. Frick built all
kinds of machinery including engines, and for a time, Geiser’s
threshers.
By the early 1880s, Geiser decided that his company would build
its own engines. Why let Frick or someone else make money off
the demand for engines to power his threshers?3 Geiser lured
engine builders away from another company and set them to work.
The new engine was named Peerless. The Geiser Manufacturing
Company was a successful operation for years as a builder of
Peerless threshers, steam engines, steam plows, saw mills, road
rollers, hay presses and later on, gasoline engines.
Geiser’s 1910 catalogue featured 64 pages of illustrations,
specifications and testimonials. Under the heading “A Satisfied
Customer is the Best Possible Advertisement,” the company
declared,
“If we are not doing as much talking about our machinery as some
manufacturers, not using as much printers’ ink, it is because
our machinery does its own talking and its own advertising...A
‘Peerless’ Outfit is a money-maker for its owner. Ask the man
who owns one.”4
No fewer than 12 different sizes and classes of engines were
available in 1910, along with various models of separators,
portable and stationary gas engines, a hay press, fuel and water
wagon, and saw mill.
In 1912, Geiser sold out to Emerson-Brantingham who continued to
build the Geiser Peerless line of traction engines and
separators. The Great Depression spelled the end for Geiser, as
it did for dozens of other machinery manufacturers.
The Western Development boasts three Geiser steam traction
engines. All three are the company’s largest, the 35 - 120 HP.
The Yorkton WDM engine was used in the Togo area of
Saskatchewan. It is on exhibit at Yorkton.
There are two Geiser engines at the WDM in Saskatoon; one is
operated at Pion-Era and other special events. It was used
originally as a demonstrator by a dealer in Winnipeg, then sold
to D.D. Fehr, an implement dealer and farmer in Haskitt, MB. A
year later, Fehr sold the engine to Jacob Bartsch of Warman, SK.
Bartsch plowed, threshed and moved the odd building with the
Geiser. About 1940 the engine was sold and took on a new life,
operating a sawmill near Garrick, SK.
The second Geiser engine in Saskatoon started its working life
about 1907 in Kansas where it broke 2,400 acres. The owner,
Jesse Crosby, then shipped it to Warren, MB where it broke some
14,000 acres of prairie and threshed over a half-million bushels
of grain. The next stop for the Geiser was Landis, SK where it
was used for breaking and threshing until 1928. The Geiser’s
final journey was to the Western Development Museum. The engine
is currently in storage at the Museum’s Curatorial Centre in
Saskatoon.
Be sure to stop in at any of the four Saskatchewan Western
Development Museum branches where you may see machines like the
Geiser that turned prairie into farmland. Better yet, plan your
visit during one of the Museum’s summer shows where you may see
engines in action. A warm welcome awaits.
1. Eshleman, W.J., The Iron Man Album, January - February, 1970,
p. 3
2. Ibid, p. 4
3. Ibid, p. 6
4. The Geiser Manufacturing Company Inc. Peerless 1910
catalogue, p. 3 (copy in the Potter collection, WDM library)
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