The History of the Snowmaking Machine

By definition, snow is crystallized ice particles that have the physical integrity and the strength to maintain their shape.† It’s normally created by Mother Nature, but when Mother Nature doesn’t deliver and commercial ski resorts or movie makers need snow, thats when snowmaking machines step in. The First Machine-Made Snow Manmade snow started out as an accident. A low-temperature laboratory in Canada was studying the effects of  rime icing on the intake of a jet engine in the 1940s. Lead by Dr. Ray Ringer, the researchers were spraying water into the air just before the engine intake in a wind tunnel, trying to reproduce natural conditions.  They didn’t create any rime ice, but they did make snow. They had to repeatedly shut down the engine and the wind tunnel to shovel it out. Attempts to commercialize a snowmaking machine began with Wayne Pierce, who was in the ski manufacturing business in the 1940s,  along with partners Art Hunt and Dave Richey. Together, they  formed the Tey Manufacturing Company of Milford, Connecticut in 1947 and sold a new ski design. But in 1949, Mother Nature got stingy and the company was hit hard by a slump in ski sales due to a dry, snowless winter. Wayne Pierce came up with a solution on March 14, 1950.  I know how to make snow! he announced when he  arrived at work on that March morning. He had the idea that if you could blow droplets of water through freezing air, the water would turn into frozen hexagonal crystals or snowflakes. Using a paint spray compressor, a nozzle and some garden hose, Pierce and his partners created a machine that made snow. The company was granted a basic-process patent in 1954 and installed a few of their snowmaking machines, but they didn’t take their snowmaking business very far. Maybe they were more interested in skis than in something to ski on. The three partners sold their company and  the snowmaking machines patent rights to the Emhart Corporation in 1956. It was Joe and Phil Tropeano, owners of the Larchmont Irrigation Company in Boston,  who bought the Tey patent and began making and developing their own snowmaking equipment from Pierces design. And as the idea of making snow started catching on, Larchmont and the Tropeano brothers began suing other makers of snowmaking equipment. The Tey patent was contested in court and overthrown on the basis that the Canadian research led by Dr. Ray Ringer predated the patent granted to Wayne Pierce. A Flurry of Patents In 1958, Alden Hanson would file a patent for a new type of snowmaking machine called the fan snowmaker. The earlier Tey patent was a compressed air-and-water machine and had its drawbacks, which included loud noise and energy demands. The hoses would also occasionally freeze up and it wasn’t unheard for the lines to blow apart. Hanson designed a snowmaking machine using a fan, particulate water and the optional use of a nucleating agent such as particles of dirt. He was granted a patent for his machine in 1961 and is considered the  pioneering model for all fan snowmaking machines today.   In 1969, a trio of inventors from Lamont Labs at Columbia University named Erikson, Wollin and Zaunier filed a patent for yet another snowmaking machine. Known as the Wollin patent, it was for a specially developed rotating fan blade that was impacted with water from the rear, resulting in mechanically atomized water leaving the front. As the water froze, it became snow. The inventors went on to create Snow Machines International, manufacturers of the snowmaking machine based on this Wollin patent. They promptly signed licensing agreements with the Hanson patent holder  to prevent an  infringement dispute with that  patent.  As part of the licensing agreement, SMI was subject to inspection by a Hanson representative.   In 1974, a patent was filed for the Boyne Snowmaker, a ducted fan which isolated the nucleator to the outside of the duct and away from the bulk water nozzles. The nozzles were positioned above the centerline and on the downstream edge of the duct. SMI was the licensed manufacturer of the Boyne Snowmaker. in 1978, Bill Riskey and Jim VanderKelen filed a patent for a machine that would come to be known as the Lake Michigan nucleator. It surrounded the existing nucleator with a water jacket. The Lake Michigan nucleator exhibited none of the freezing problems that earlier fan snowmakers sometimes suffered from. VanderKelen received a patent for his Silent Storm Snowmaker, a multiple speed fan with a new style propeller blade, in 1992.