During a romantic picnic on a Wisconsin lake, Bess Cary tells her fiancé, Ole Evinrude, that she’d love a dish of ice cream. While rowing back to shore Ole decides the trip would be a lot easier if his rowboat had a motor, and he soon invented the first outboard motor in 1909. All Evinrude engines undergo intensive testing which includes real world boating applications at our secure onthe-water facilities in Illinois and Florida.