Fonds F325 - Louden Machinery Company of Canada collection

The Louden Manufacturing Works, based in Fairfield, Iowa, was founded in 1868 by William Louden (1841-1931), who invented a hay carrier in 1867. In 1887, Louden and his wife, Mary Jane, formed the Louden Machinery Company. Joined by his brother Robert B. Louden (1857-1939), who became the company’s president when it incorporated in 1892, William Louden continued to invent and manufacture new products, including a flexible barn door hanger (1895), barn litter carriers and tracks (1898), all-steel cow stalls (1907), individual automatic watering bowls for cows (1912), an Easy Feeding Hog Trough (1914), and an industrial line of Overhead Carrying Equipment (1917). The company expanded in the early 1900s, opening factories in Canada (1900), Minneapolis (1903), Albany, New York (1912), and Chicago (1915). A Louden factory was built in Guelph, Ontario in 1902. It closed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the factory was taken over by the Beatty Brothers Limited of Fergus.

In 1906, the Louden Machinery Company also established an Architectural Department to design barns and stables. The company’s product line continued to expand in the 1920s and 1930s as well, adding products such as barn cupolas, exhaust and intake hoods and louvers, fans, valves, pulleys, power hoists, concrete mangers, a patented garage door hanger, playground equipment (including slides, see-saws, gym sets, "swing bobs," and "whirl-arounds"), and thermostats.

After William and Robert’s deaths in 1931 and 1939, the company was led by William’s son, Robert Bruce Louden (d. 1952). Another of William’s sons, Arthur Clare Louden (1881-1956), served as president from 1952 to 1953. In 1956, the Louden Machinery Company was purchased by Mechanical Handling Systems, Inc. of Detroit, Michigan. Some of Louden’s farm equipment continued to be manufactured until 1965, and the company’s overhead handling equipment division was taken over by the American Chain and Cable Company.