Urschel Laboratories Inc. is a global retailer of food-processing machinery, based in Chesterton, Indiana. The company was founded by William Urschel in 1910, after he invented a gooseberry snipper. The company's headquarters were located on South Napoleon Street in Valparaiso, Indiana, from 1910 until 1957, when a new plant was constructed on Calumet Avenue, also in Valparaiso. The company moved to a new facility in nearby Chesterton in 2015.
History
1907–1930s In 1907, William Emmett Urschel began experimental work on a gooseberry stemmer. Urschel received his first patent for the Gooseberry Snipper in 1908. In 1910, Urschel founded the Urschel Gooseberry Snipper Factory, a small two-story wooden shop at 158 South Napoleon in Valparaiso, Indiana, located next to his residence and in an area populated with gooseberry farmers. Urschel later invented a machine that provides chocolate coating on ice cream to make an Eskimo Pie. In 1922, Urschel had invented and began selling the bean snipper, which increased the amount of beans canned each year, rising from approximately two million cases of canned beans in 1922 to more than six million cases in 1928. Beginning in 1923, Urschel's company began development of a mechanical green bean harvester, with backing from the Scott Viner company in Columbus, Ohio. William Urschel is the first known man to attempt to build such a machine. In 1925, Urschel began working on a red beet harvester and topper. By 1929, the company had been renamed Urschel Laboratories. In August of that year, the company sent a mechanical green bean harvester to the Fremont Canning Company in Fremont, Michigan. At the time, green beans were only picked by hand. The harvesting machine, which was capable of picking 90 to 95 percent of beans in a given area, was driven by a self-contained gasoline motor, and was estimated to save approximately $500 per day by replacing human labor. Canning companies viewed the machine favorably as there was a lack of willing labor at the time to pick the beans by hand during the heat of the day. Urschel Laboratories was believed to be the only company to offer such a machine. Bean picking was one of the few agricultural activities where machinery had not been used. Urschel's red beet harvester and topper – manufactured by the Scott Viner company and known as a Scott-Urschel product – was released in 1930, and was a success. At that time, the company employed 15 men who worked in the construction and perfection of Urschel's inventions. Only model-building experimentation took place at Urschel Laboratories, while production was handled by industrial producers. However, William Urschel planned to add 3,000 sq ft (280 m2) of floor space to his factory with the intention to perform some manufacturing at the plant. The green bean picker was still in development as of 1930, at which point William Urschel was also perfecting a sugar beet harvester, expected to be his among his most profitable products. Urschel had also perfected an onion topper and a vegetable peeler. By November 1936, Urschel Laboratories had manufactured several canning machines for Chivers and Sons, which was in negotiations to purchase a red beet harvester. At that time, Urschel Laboratories was working on the first machine that would be used to cut celery for canning.
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