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Mercury Marine

company

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ1468438
Source-derived summary

Mercury Marine is a marine engine division of Brunswick Corporation headquartered in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. The main product line is outboard motors. It also produces the MerCruiser line of sterndrives and inboard engines, as well as a lineup of electric outboard motors. Utilizing modular and portable 48V lithium-ion batteries and transverse flux motor technology, these yield high torque with optimum efficiency.

Mercury's engines are manufactured in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin and Mercury is the only US outboard engine manufacturer and the only outboard engine manufacturer with a V12, 600hp outboard engine.

History

Founding

The Kiekhaefer Mercury company began in 1939 when engineer Carl Kiekhaefer purchased a small outboard motor company in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Kiekhaefer's original intention for the Kiekhaefer Corporation was to make magnetic separators for the dairy industry. The purchase included 300 defective outboard motors. Kiekhaefer and a small staff of employees rebuilt the motors and sold them to Montgomery Ward, a mail-order company. The motors were much improved, so the buyer purchased more.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Mercury Marine” as company. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1939—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1939. The account is most persuasive where Mercury, Marine and company can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as company. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1468438. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Mercury Marine”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mercury Marine primary sources, Mercury Marine archive and Mercury research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Mercury Marine”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Mercury Marine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.