Andreas Stihl

Germany, chainsaws. Stihl founded his company near Stuttgart in 1926 and in 1929 produced a petrol-powered "tree-felling machine", leading the way towards portable chainsaws for forestry. Stihl concentrated on hand-held power tools for forests and gardens and sold them through specialist dealers who serviced what they sold, a model that carried it into markets worldwide. He died in 1973.