“The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do”.
— Sarah Ban Breathnach

Lou, Harry and Julius Johnson, three brothers from Terre Haute, Indiana, were early 2oth-century gasoline engine experts and designers who eventually came to produce a well-known line of outboard boat motors. The eldest, Lou, first envisioned an idea for an outboard motor in 1903 when he had to row an eighteen-foot boat ten miles upstream to harvest walnuts. During this time, other inventors had similar visions and were working to develop outboards: the French-manufactured Motogodille appeared about 1904; the Waterman, Evinrude, Lockwood-Ash, Koban, and Caille motors, all competing designs, followed it. The eventual winner was the Evinrude, made by Ole Evinrude, a Norwegian immigrant living in Wisconsin. Nevertheless, and luckily for Evinrude, the Johnson brothers had other dreams of an aerial nature.

The brothers, who had been building in-line, inboard marine engines of both the two- and four-stroke varieties, had a successful marine business, but Lou had higher aspirations; he had become an aviation buff. By 1909, the Johnsons had designed a state of the art, lightweight V-4, two-cycle aviation engine capable of producing 60 hp. But at the time, no aircraft was available to test the engine so they built one of the first monoplanes in history. Never having seen one, they constructed it from an article in a flight magazine – and what an exceptional aircraft it was. When most early aircraft were made of wood and fabric, theirs used aluminum and nickel steel; when most landed on skids theirs touched down on tricycle landing gear; the Johnson design was light years ahead of its time. The aircraft flew for the first time in August, 1911, with Lou at the controls. In fact, it flew twice that day, because on the initial flight Lou had to teach himself to fly.

The Johnsons needed investors to finance production of the aircraft. Unfortunately, this was not to become a reality because financiers saw no commercial value in the small plane, even though it flew for three years without a crash. Additionally, World War I was starting to raise its ugly head so necessary ignition parts, made in Germany, became unavailable. The final blow to the dream was a brutal Midwest tornado that demolished their Indiana manufacturing facility—all was lost. Well, for a while.

In 1922 the Johnsons produced the most revolutionary outboard boat motor of the period. After concluding that single-cylinder engines turned the crankshaft too slowly and did not develop power to full potential, they fixed that shortcoming with the 35 pound, twin-cylinder, high-speed engine seen in the advertisement on this page.

In 1935, Evinrude (by then Outboard Marine Corporation) bought the Johnson Motor Company and produced three engine lines: ELTO (Evinrude Light Twin Outboard), Evinrude, and Johnson. OMC went bankrupt in 2000 and Bombardier acquired all corporate assets; the Johnson outboard line discontinued in 2007.

Thanks to The Australian Vintage Aviation Society, www.tavas.com.au and The Yankee Chapter, Antique Outboard Motor Club, www.yankeeaomci.org, for their informative websites that help educate individuals regarding the Johnson brothers – dreamers who did.