Taken from www.boats.com/news-reviews
The story goes that Ole Evinrude, a Milwaukee machinist, had rowed his date to an island in a local lake for a summer picnic. The gal commented that some ice cream would sure make a fine treat on such a hot day, and the gallant Ole jumped into the boat and rowed back to shore for the dessert. By the time he returned to the island, however, the ice cream had melted, which allegedly prompted Evinrude to start thinking about how to power a small boat with a gasoline motor. The ice cream might have been soup, but Bess Carey later married Ole anyway, and he produced his first prototype outboard in 1907. Spurred on by Bess, who is credited with creating the famous ad copy, "Don't Row! Use the Evinrude Detachable Row Boat Motor," Ole went into production with the motor in 1909. His was not the first outboard motor, but he did create the template for the motor we still use today, with a vertical crankshaft mated to a horizontal prop shaft through a set of bevel gears in the water. Did this business with the ice cream really happen? Who knows. But as my old history professor Watson Parker was fond of saying, "If it didn't happen, it should have." So now it's fact.
The story goes that Ole Evinrude, a Milwaukee machinist, had rowed his date to an island in a local lake for a summer picnic. The gal commented that some ice cream would sure make a fine treat on such a hot day, and the gallant Ole jumped into the boat and rowed back to shore for the dessert. By the time he returned to the island, however, the ice cream had melted, which allegedly prompted Evinrude to start thinking about how to power a small boat with a gasoline motor. The ice cream might have been soup, but Bess Carey later married Ole anyway, and he produced his first prototype outboard in 1907. Spurred on by Bess, who is credited with creating the famous ad copy, "Don't Row! Use the Evinrude Detachable Row Boat Motor," Ole went into production with the motor in 1909. His was not the first outboard motor, but he did create the template for the motor we still use today, with a vertical crankshaft mated to a horizontal prop shaft through a set of bevel gears in the water. Did this business with the ice cream really happen? Who knows. But as my old history professor Watson Parker was fond of saying, "If it didn't happen, it should have." So now it's fact.