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Marvin Priefert was born to be an inventor. A native of Nebraska, he was born in 1923 and was intelligent and inquisitive from the start. He was just four years old when he followed his brothers to the country school they attended. He spent a week sitting outside on the steps each day before the teacher invited him in to join the class. Marvin was 13 when his father died; leaving him and his two older brothers to take over and run the family farm, working 160 acres with teams of horses. A year later, at age 14, Marvin's model farm won first place at the Nebraska State Fair, a prize he won three consecutive years.

A major turning point in Marvin's life occurred in 1942, when he joined the Navy to serve in World War II. When he returned to the family farm in 1945, he came back with new ideas that would change their traditional farming practices. After seeing bulldozers in the military, Marvin and his brothers purchased a D-7 Caterpillar. In his shop, he built two six-bottom plows, arranging them to be pulled in tandem behind the dozer. This dramatically increased the number of acres he and his brothers could plow in a day. He also designed and patented a labor-saving mechanical hay loader, as well as a grain wagon. These inventions caught the attention of various farming publications and even resulted in a mention in a Readers Digest article about inventors. Read More...