Davenport Machinery: Using Intelligence, Grit, and Hard Work to Build an Empire

Casper Edward Blakerly: Casper was born and raised on the third-generation family farm, and his parents recognized very early that he was highly intelligent. He was reading before his fourth birthday and they did everything they could to provide him with books. As soon as he could walk, Casper followed his dad around the farm and went for tools when his father was repairing one of the farm machines. While his father did the farm labor to raise good grain crops and beef cattle, Casper spent his time in the farm workshop building the inventions his mind generated.He started university in his sixteenth year and was already selling large fence post pounders to neighboring farmers. University professors found this student amazing with the fast ways he mastered every new subject and watched him graduate at twenty with a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering.With his wife and two sons, Casper traveled the world building an expanding fleet of manufacturing plants and always insisting the machines they built had to be the most efficient and reliable on the market. While his sons were touring zoos, parks, historic buildings, and museums, Casper was always right in the middle of each trip and was more like a third brother than their father.Davenport Machinery shares the Blakerleys’ problems, fights, and successes upon which an empire and a family are built.