Andreas Stihl

Andreas Stihl (November 10, 1896 in Zürich, Switzerland – January 14, 1973 in Rohrbronn, Baden-Württemberg, Germany) was an engineer and important inventor in the area of chainsaws, and the founder of Andreas Stihl AG & Company.

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." This saw weighed in at a hefty 63 kg and had a one-inch gauge chain with handles at either end. Due to its bulk, it required two people to operate. In 1929, Stihl built the world's first petrol powered chainsaw, named 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 capable of being operated by a single person. In 1959, the company introduced the lightweight Stihl Contra chainsaw.

The company he founded still bears his name, and is privately owned by his children. Andreas Stihl had four children with his first wife, among them Hans Peter Stihl (born 1932) and Eva Mayr-Stihl (born 1935), who succeeded her father in managing the company and remaining Vorstand till 2002.

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