Serious Business

After consulting with the people who would become the initial investors in the planter monitor, Bob Dickey approached Sangamo Electric Company in Springfield, Illinois, about his idea. The man he approached, Bob Lanphier III, would become the president of DICKEY-john Corporation two years later. For the first year, Bob Dickey operated out of his farmhouse, with his wife serving as his secretary. They began receiving hundreds of inquiries due to an ad they placed in Prairie Farmer magazine. Farmers from hundreds of miles away came to see this new technology.

In January 1966, they decided to incorporate. One night at the kitchen table, Jack Littlejohn came up with the name DICKEY-john (the "john" in DICKEY-john is always printed in lower case, denoting Littlejohn). Thus, the corporation was born.