HISTORY OF SNOWMAKING
In the 1940s a Canadian research group led by Dr. Ray Ringer was studying the effects of rime icing on a jet engine's intake. In order to create a natural environment, the laboratory was at a very low temperature as they sprayed water towards the engine intake. Instead of creating the desired rime ice, the experiment yielded snow. Dr. Ringer and his research team was uninterested in inventing a snowmaking machine and never filed a patent.
A few years later, engineer Wayne Pierce and his two partners formed the Tey Manufacturing Company of Milford, Connecticut in 1947. Their aluminum ski ALU-60 was selling well until the winter of 1949 when sales dropped due to a winter with little snow. The next year, on March 14th, Pierce told his colleagues that he had thought of a way to make snow, by blowing simple droplets of water into freezing air. Pierce gathered a paint spray compressor, a nozzle and garden hose, and Tey Manufacturing was able to create a snowmaking machine. They were granted a patent for their work in 1954 and built and sold a small amount of their machines until 1956 when they sold the company, along with the patent rights, to Emhart Corporation.
Two years later, in 1958, Alden Hanson filed a patent for a completely original snowmaking machine which he called the fan snowmaker. Tey's patent, a compressed air & water machine, required great amounts of energy and was painfully noisy, and Hanson's design was much improved. Hanson's fan machine was the real starting point for snowmaking.
shown at right.
June 11, 1969: Inventors from Columbia University, Erikson, Wollin, and Zaunier, filed the Wollin patent. They created a snowmaking machine which had a rotating fan blade that was hit with water from the rear, then blowing out water which froze to become snow.
1974: A patent was filed for the Boyne Snowmaker.
1978: Bill Riskey and Jim VanderKelen filed a patent called Lake Michigan Nucleator which covered the nucleator with a "water jacket", thus eliminating the problem of the fan freezing.
1992: VanderKelen filed a patent for the Silent Storm Snowmaker, which featured a multiple speed fan and a newly shaped propeller blade.
