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. He is often hailed as the "Father of the chainsaw".
Stihl went to the Volksschule in Zürich, before moving to relatives in Germany. 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. 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. 
Stihl founded a new company, for steam boiler prefiring systems in the same year in Stuttgart. 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. It was, however, the first electric chainsaw worldwide. 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. The following year, Stihl created the first ever chainsaw that could be operated by only one person. 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. During the Nazi regime, Stihl was member of the Nazi Party. 
Since 1971, Stihl is the biggest chainsaw manufacturing company in the world. 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.