***This is the first of two stories on the past and present of Martin Engineering in Neponset, where employees are celebrating the company’s 80th anniversary this year. The information was taken from “Entrepreneurial Leadership of an American Family Business,” a book published by the company in 2014.

The Martin Engineering story began in 1900, when Lawrence Peterson and his brother left their home in Sweden and moved to the United States. Lawrence eventually settled in Kewanee, attracted by the large Swedish population in Henry County.

Lawrence, a pattern maker by trade, found work at Peters Pump Co. in Kewanee and eventually worked at Demmler Manufacturing. He met and married another young Swedish immigrant, Emma Matson, and they had four children.

Edwin F. Peterson was their second child, and like his father he became a pattern maker. Like his father, Edwin worked at Demmler.

There, during World War II, Edwin F. Peterson watched as several men took on an arduous task.

The men were using sledgehammers to beat on core machines to loosen the sand and release products from the molds. Peterson thought that there must be a better way to do that job,

While that thought probably also went through the minds of the men wielding the hammers, Peterson was the one who came up with the better way.

He designed the ball vibrator, a device that used compressed air to propel a ball bearing inside two steel raceways. Vibration could empty the core machines without subjecting them to a beating with sledgehammers, and could be used for many other manufacturing operations.

In 1949, Peterson was granted U.S. and international patents for his vibrator. They were the first of 54 patents Peterson would obtain for products developed at Martin Engineering.

After coming up with the idea for the vibrator, Peterson resigned from Demmler to devote full time to developing the device. With financial assistance from investors Charles H. Waller and Peterson’s friend W.E. “Jim” Martin of the Martin Machine Co., he started manufacturing his Vibrolator.

Peterson saw that Jim Martin had better name recognition than Peterson, so he changed the name of his company to Martin Engineering.

By the mid-1950s, Martin Engineering had introduced new products and had engaged national distributors of its products. The business had outgrown the Rose Street building, and in 1954 Petersen moved it to Neponset. 

Beginning in a large garage on Route 34, Martin Engineering soon built new quarters a couple of blocks to the east, where they remain today.

And that was the beginning of what is now a multinational company with more than 1,000 employees worldwide.

Seth Mercer, Martin Engineering’s present-day marketing director, said, “We have plants on every continent except Antarctica.”

And the company is still headquartered in Neponset.

Company employees are planning to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Martin Engineering with a big celebration in September. More details of that event will be released later.

***This copy has been edited to correct certain errors in names and other facts.