Joseph-Armand Bombardier

Joseph-Armand Bombardier (1907 to 1964) was a Canadian inventor from Valcourt, Quebec, who invented the Ski-Doo snowmobile in 1959, the first mass-produced snow machine, which launched snowmobiling as a sport and recreation. As a boy he modified mechanical devices into mobile toys, and in 1926 he opened his own machine shop in Valcourt. Aware that snow made rural roads impassable in winter, he spent the next decade developing motorized vehicles for snow. To keep them light he placed the motor at the back and spread the weight over a track and wheel system, steering with a pair of front skis and driving the track with a rubber-covered sprocket so that the vehicles floated over snow. He obtained his first patent for the sprocket system in Canada in 1937.