Champion Blower and Forge Company

In 1874, when Henry B. Keiper was 16, he watched a blacksmith shoe one of his horses. While the blacksmith was working a bellows to keep the fire hot to forge the iron, Keiper was struck with an idea. A rotary blower would relieve the blacksmith of pumping the bellows that fanned the fire, adding oxygen to it. This epiphany led to the origins of Champion Fan Corp. Keiper designed what he dubbed a gumball rotary forge, which used a mechanism that allowed the machine to operate under its own velocity when momentum had been achieved. 

The device used a fan in a round housing and a rotary crank handle. In fact, some of these rotary blowers are still in use today. Founded in Lancaster, Pa., in 1875 by Keiper, Champion Blower & Forge Co. manufactured blacksmith forges, rotary blowers, tire benders and tire shrinkers. Early in the 1900s, the product line was broadened to include centrifugal fans, drill presses and power hacksaws, and then it expanded again to include different fans and blowers, along with additional machine tools. In the mid-1950s, with the Cold War nuclear scare, the company's sales increased when fallout shelters needed blowers to provide air.

Keiper died in 1920, and his son-in-law, Charles B. Long, succeeded him as president. Until the late 1960s, the Long family ran the company. In 1969, it was sold and relocated to Roselle, Ill. In 1978, it was sold again and ceased operation in 1986.

You can see one of these forges in the Train Depot.