San
Joaquin County
Biographies
JOHN E. FUNK
It is always timely and interesting
to write of the personal achievements of men who are doing really big and
meritorious things in this wonderful world of progress. In this connection a story of John E. Funk,
the well-known inventor, of Stockton, California, and a review of his more
notable achievements, should prove interesting.
He was born in Wellington, Sumner County, Kansas, April 3, 1880, and was
a lad of seven years when his parents removed to California, settling at San
Diego. His inventive genius first came
to the notice of the public in 1898 at the age of eighteen years when he
invented and built a four cylinder motor, which, according to the records, was
probably the first four cylinder engine for automobiles ever built; this was
done in a small shop in Riverside, California.
Next he ran a hoist for the Wedge Mine at Randsburg. He began at the bottom of the ladder and
gradually worked his way to the top, working in various mechanical
positions. From Riverside he went to Los
Angeles and was employed in the shop of Leutweiler
& Sons, installing pumping plants for them and doing trouble work on gas
engines, and then he was with the Hercules Factory in San Francisco. For a year he was oiler and water tender on
the S. S. Newport of the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., plying between Panama and
San Francisco, learning marine engineering.
Next we find him as half owner and manager of a vaudeville outfit on a
circuit of thirty-six towns in California, having six different shows, one a
week later than the other, giving six shows every night. After a year they found others had entered
the same field and competition became so keen they closed out and he returned
to his former occupation. He was employed
at the Sampson Iron Works in Stockton, installing pumps and engines. Returning to Los Angeles he was with Waite,
Bailey & Sons in the same line. He
next became superintendent on the old Jones track at Middle River in San
Joaquin County for the Rindge Land & Navigation Company, and while working
in this capacity he conceived the idea of his now famous ditch-digging machine,
for he knew that such a machine would revolutionize the work being done by hand
in the big potato, asparagus, onion and celery fields. The Funk ditcher does the work of forty men
and requires but one man to operate.
Rows may be cultivated right up to the ditches, the dirt being
distributed between the rows by the machine, a cylinder-like attachment
catching the dirt as it is thrown up by the digger, spreading it in such a
manner that it does not interfere with cultivation nor the growth of the
crop. These ditches are dug for
sub-irrigation and at such a distance apart that the land will be thoroughly
saturated. The machine digs a ditch ten
inches wide and from twenty to twenty-four inches deep at the rate of from
thirty to sixty lineal feet a minute, a great labor-saver as well as a reducer
of expense. The capacity of this machine
is sixty acres a day, running the full twenty-four hours. The Funk ditch diggers last season were
scattered over forty miles of territory in the Delta country at one time, and
Mr. Funk visited the district, flying over the working machines in an
aeroplane, making the entire trip in an hour or so; a journey that otherwise
would have required several days, necessitating the use of power launches and
automobiles, and possible afoot part of the time. Mr. Funk is quite a flying enthusiast and
intensely interested in aerial means of locomotion. He has taken many trips over the Delta.
Mr. Funk has spent thousands of
dollars and many years in perfecting his ditching machines, adding to his
steadily growing manufacturing plant, erecting new buildings, adding new
machinery, laying concrete walks and roadways, and otherwise planning for a
greater output. He has purchased several
adjoining pieces of property to add to his growing necessities for the big
Stockton plant, which is becoming one of the important industrial factors of
the city. For years Mr. Funk would not
sell his machine but chose to do only contract work but lately he has placed
them on the market, the initial sale being to Fred H. Rindge. Under the general supervision of Mr. Funk,
sixteen of these ditch-digging machines are in active use in the Delta
sections, cutting 3,033 miles of ditches in 1919, and saving the labor of
hundreds of men.
On the Pierce ranch, near Benicia,
one of Mr. Funk’s machines cut twenty-six miles of ditches on 500 acres for the
laying of five-inch drain tile. This is
the modern way of securing the fullest results from the soil, and is
particularly adapted to soils that have heretofore not been productive on
account of salts and alkali. Since
perfecting his machines for making the smaller ditches he is devoting his time to
making larger machines for such work at ditching for cement pipe and for
digging new and reclaiming old drainage and irrigating ditches. He has lately made a five-year contract with
the Rindge Land & Navigation Company to deepen and clean 150 miles of ditch. Without these ditchers thousands of acres of
Delta soil would not have been properly farmed the past season, for it is not
only impossible to secure sufficient labor to do the work of cutting irrigation
canals but the machine made ditches are better and cheaper.
In 1917, in addition to digging
ditches for several thousand acres of potatoes, Mr. Funk dug ditches in 4,000
acres of hemp on the Rindge tract. In
1918, 4,000 acres planted to corn on the Rindge property were successfully
ditched in the growing fields. Mr. Funk
has perfected a ditch-digging machine that will dig a ditch three feet wide and
four feet deep. The new “Giant of the
Delta,” Mr. Funk’s latest machine, will do the work of hundreds of laborers and
perform the task as easily as the machines that plow ten-inch ditches through
all kinds of soil at the rate of some fifty feet per minute. The Buda motor is used in all smaller
machines. The Funk inventions are fully
protected by patents. This adds greatly
to their value and increases the Funk prestige as a manufacturing producer, as
well as adding another big factor to the industrial life of Stockton, a city
already noted throughout the world for its great agricultural manufacturing
plants. In summing up, there is no doubt
that Mr. Funk has done more with his inventions in saving money for the farmers
of the San Joaquin Delta in their agricultural development and enterprise than
any other inventor in the state for during the War the saving to the farmer was
about $25.00 a mile and without the machine they would not have been able to
save their crops as labor was not to be had.
Mr. Funk is the father of two
children: Jessie Irene and William
Emmet. He stands today a leader among
industrial and manufacturing men, a man of ability who has put practical ideas
to the test and won success.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
784-787. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County Biographies
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County Genealogy
Databases