Quote:
Originally Posted by chris mac
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I bet that your friend's engine is a
Yanmar 2GM, as certified by the metal label attached to the engine.
The name 'Yanmar' was invented in 1921 by employees of 山岡発動機工作所 Yamaoka Engine Works. That's the company started by 山岡 孫吉 Yamaoka Magokichi (1888-1962/Meiji 21–Showa 37).
Yamaoka wanted to brand the engines he
sold for hulling rice with the dragonfly (tomba), a traditional symbol of harvest time he remembered from his childhood working in rice fields with his father. The tomba tradename was already registered. An employee suggested the name oniyama, the ‘king’ of dragonflies. The ogre or demon prefix, オニ oni, was dropped from the insect name, leaving ヤンマ yanma, then the terminal vowel was lengthened to ヤンマー yanmā. Yamaoka also liked the proposed brand name because it sounded not dissimilar to his own
family name. For international
marketing, a terminal -r was added to lengthen the final vowel:
Yanmar.
Yamaoka Magokichi was the sixth of seven
children born to a poor rice-farming
family. He attended compulsory elementary
school 1894-1898, but his family’s resources and the limited opportunities in rural
Japan meant he could only attend tutorial
classes in 1898 and the second year of advanced elementary
school in 1899.
In 1903 at age 15 and on a day when his father was absent from home working as a volunteer at the local temple, Yamaoka borrowed ¥3.60 from his mother Kuni (who had
sold a 60 kg bag of rice to get the money) and, promising that he would only return when he had made ¥10,000, left for Osaka.
In Osaka, he lived and worked for 18 months as an apprentice in a
photography studio, mounting photographs. He supplemented his meagre wage and board by
fishing. While
fishing at the Dojima River, Yamaoka met and befriended Okoshi Sentaro an employee of Osaka Gas Company 大阪瓦斯株式会社, leading to Yamaoka getting a job as a labourer laying pipe for Osaka Gas starting in April 1905.
Osaka Gas started operations in 1905, supplying town gas (gas manufactured by decarbonising coal in a coking oven) to domestic and industrial customers in Osaka; by October 1905 Osaka Gas had connected 3,351 customers to gas produced at their Iwasaki Plant. While working with Osaka Gas in 1905, Yamaoka for the first time saw an internal combustion engine, one fuelled by town gas.
Yamaoka realised the potential market for domestic and industrial gas
appliances. From mid-1906 he started to sell and install rubber hose (to pipe gas to appliances) and gas
appliances in his leisure time. By the end of 1906, Yamaoka had made a profit of nearly ¥1,000, allowing him to leave the employ of Osaka Gas and do business independently. At age 19, he rented a terrace house to use as his shop-office, had a telephone connected, and traded as Yamaoka Gasu Shokai (Yamaoka Gas Company). By age 25 in 1912, Yamaoka found repairing and reselling used gas engines had become a major part of his business. He rented land and on 22 March 1912 established Yamaoka Hatsudoki Kosakusho (Yamaoka Engine Works), employing seven or eight factory workers in addition to clerks. When a hydroelectric
power station was opened to supply Osaka with electricity, gas-fuelled
generator sets became redundant in the city. Yamaoka bought surplus gas-fuelled
generator sets cheaply, reconditioned them, and sold them outside the urban electricity grid.
The demand for gas generator sets grew during World War I but collapsed at war’s end in 1918. Having accumulated savings over ¥300,000 Yamaoka returned triumphantly to his native village.
Back in Osaka after three months and with demand for gas-fuelled engines still in a slump, Yamaoka and his old friend Okoshi Sentaro converted a gas engine to run on petrol and set it up to
hull rice.
In 1920-21 he explored other agricultural uses for petrol engines, including to
power water pumps and shears (shearing wool from sheep), and developed a prototype 3 horsepower petrol engine under the Yanmā brand name.
Yamaoka displayed his pioneering rice huller, rice cleaner, and
water pumps in local rural villages and at the 1922 Peace Commemoration Exhibition in Tokyo. In 1925, he added a petrol engine for fishing boats to his business line.
Business problems, including an incident in which one petrol engine exploded, and debts associated with overordering and a failed venture into trucking, caused Yamaoka to restructure his business as a public company in 1931.
In 1932, Yamaoka travelled along the Trans-Siberian Railway to visit the Leipzig
trade fair in
Germany. At the
trade fair in March 1932, he watched a film promoting the first
diesel engines made by Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg A.G. (MAN) and then visited the MAN factory in Augsburg. Yamaoka tried to find German or other European companies making
diesel engines small (3-6 hp) and light enough to use in Japanese agriculture. He commissioned German companies to make such a diesel engine and a
fuel injection
pump for it.
On his return to
Japan in July 1932, Yamaoka tried to develop a small diesel engine to replace the petrol engines. The engine he had commissioned to be made in
Germany did not
work. In early 1933, prototypes of 2-cycle mid-size (25-75 hp) diesel engines were completed – first one cylinder, then two, and finally three. In June 1933, a 4-cycle 10 hp engine started limited production. But success with small engines (3-5 hp) was elusive. After one year of failure marked more by black smoke than efficient combustion he gave up.
Resigned to his failure, he gave each employee ¥200 to take
vacation at a hot spring resort. His workers refused the
vacation and continued
research and development. On 23 December 1933, the first 3 hp Yanmā diesel engine ran perfectly. In 1935, Yamaoka borrowed
money from the Kobe branch of the Industrial Bank of Japan to establish a factory near the old
Kanzaki railway station (now called Amagaski) to build what became the Yanmā HB engine.
The outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese war in 1937, when Japanese forces invaded Beijing and northern
China, provided a massive boost to business. The Yanmā works was placed under the management of the Japanese
Navy and a second diesel engine factory established at Nagahama.
By the end of World War II in 1945 the Yanmā factories had been bombed to ruins. After the war Yamaoka converted the Nagahama factory to produce agricultural machinery and rebuilt the Amagaski factory. Engines designed for naval ships were converted to generator sets and sold. After the war, a group of former Imperial Japanese
Navy diesel engineers visited Yamaoka and begged for jobs. Yamaoka employed them and set them to
work designing marinised diesel engines. In January 1947 that team completed the prototype of the first LB engine, a small (5-7 hp) vertical cylinder engine with an airtight valves-in-head design. Production went ahead at the
Kanzaki Plant, which increasingly focused on
marine diesels. In 1951, Yanmar launched the LD series of engines (15-90 hp) that consolidated the trend to converting the Japanese coastal fishing fleet to diesel inboard engines.
The WW2 victor nations allowed Japanese firms to start exporting goods from 1947. Exports reached their first peak in 1949, with stabilisation of the Japanese currency and the
government encouraging exports to
rebuild war-damaged Japan. Yanmar started exporting
marine engines for yachts in 1971.
In 1953 Yamaoka revisited the MAN Diesel works in Germany. Aware that Germany had no memorial to Dr Rudolf Diesel – perhaps because of German attitudes to suicide – Yamaoka funded construction of a Japanese rock garden and a
bronze relief of Dr Diesel in Augsburg to fill the gap. In 1955, the German Inventors’ Association awarded Yamaoka Magokichi their Diesel Gold Medal. In 1957, Federal Germany awarded Yamaoka the Cross of the Order of Merit.
The GM engine series, a direct injection marine engine with low
fuel consumption and high output based on a vertical cylinder tractor engine, was introduced to the market in January 1980. The GM series were lightweight, compact, and reliable, creating a good reputation among cruisers worldwide.