John Deere: Man with the Golden Plow

John Deere and tractors are as synonymous as water and H2O. So it is ironic that the man who started Deere & Co., one of the oldest and largest American corporations, with annual sales exceeding $21 billion, never produced a single tractor in his life. His claim to fame was based on the plow. It all started in 1837 when Deere picked up a broken saw blade, cut the teeth off with a hand chisel, polished the smooth side of the blade and fashioned it with a hammer into a "plow that would scour," that is, clean itself. It was the foundation upon which Deere & Co. grew. Award-winning author Daniel Alef's biographical profile of John Deere describes his Horatio Alger-like ascent from poverty to the pinnacle of the American dream. [1,334-word Titans of Fortune article]