Andreas Stihl

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Andreas Stihl (b. 1896, in Zürich, Switzerland; d. 1973) was an engineer and important inventor in the area of chainsaws, the founder of the company Stihl.

Stihl founded a company for steam boiler prefiring systems in 1926 in the town of Cannstatt, near Stuttgart, Germany. In the same year, he patented the "Cutoff Chainsaw for Electric Power". In 1929, he built the world's first petrol powered chainsaw, the 'tree-felling machine'. The company continued to grow and in 1931 it became the first European company to export chainsaws to America and Russia. In 1950, Stihl developed the first chainsaw that was able to be operated by a single person. 1959 saw the introduction of perhaps the company's best known product, the lightweight STIHL Contra chainsaw.

The company he founded still bears his name, and is privately owned by his children.