Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company

Harry Karl Ihrig, an engineer at the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company in the United States, demonstrates the first vehicle powered by a fuel cell—a 20-horsepower farm tractor. 

Kordesch was not the only person, nor was he the first, to try hydrazine for fuel cell power. Others had the same idea. In the 1960s, the now-defunct Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company built a small 3-kilowatt golf cart powered by that exotic fuel. Earlier, Monsanto Research Corporation developed a 20-kW hydrazine-air alkaline fuel cell system for a 3A-ton Army truck. In 1972, Shell Research in England put a 10-kW hydrazine-air system in a Dutch-built DAF-44 car. In 1982, according to Kordesch s book,... 

The controlled recirculation BWR (CRBWR) was designed by the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company. The reactor was built for the Northern States Power Company and featured an integral steam superheater. The reactor was called the "Pathfinder" and was a 66-MWe and 164-MWt plant. The reactor was built near Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and operated from 1966 to 1967. 

The first fuel cell-powered vehicle in the world was the Allis Chalmers 15 kW fuel cell-powered tractor, built in 1959 by a team led by Harry Ihrig. It was powered by an alkaline fuel cell system, and in October 1959, it successfully ploughed a field of alfalfa in West Allis, Wisconsin. After the demonstration, the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company donated the tractor to the Smithsonian. 

In the laboratories of the agricultural equipment manufacturers Allis-Chalmers, a new version of fuel cell with immobilized alkaline electrolyte solution was developed. The company reequipped one of its tractors to electric traction with an electric motor powered by four batteries consisting of 252 alkaline fuel cells each. The traction was strong enough for a load of 3000 pounds. This tractor was a successful demonstration exhibited on different agricultural fairs in the United States. 

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