CATERPILLAR INC.

formerly (192586) Caterpillar Tractor Company, major American manufacturer of earth-moving, construction, and materials-handling equipment. Caterpillar also makes diesel and natural gas engines for industrial and marine use. Headquarters are in Peoria, Ill. Benjamin Holt, the owner of a California heavy equipment company, invented the familiar caterpillar tractor a few years before World War I. The tractors ran on continuous metal-belted tracks instead of wheels. The tracks kept the heavy tractors from sinking in mud or dirt, and during the war British and American forces successfully used such treads on their armoured tanks. In 1925 Holt's firm, Holt Manufacturing Company, was merged with another equipment company, the C.L. Best Tractor Company. The new company was incorporated as the Caterpillar Tractor Company and headquarters were moved to Illinois. Caterpillar now manufactures a wide variety of machines used in agriculture, construction, logging, mining, petroleum, industrial warehousing, and public service markets. The company had a long history of trade with the Soviet Union, going back to the 1920s when Caterpillar sold the Soviet Union $18,000,000 worth of construction equipment to facilitate the country's first Five Year Plan (19291933).