Ernst Vilter

A German immigrant, arrived in Milwaukee 1866 and soon entered into the machine shop business as Weisel and Vilter. Like many machine shops of the day they worked to improve on the Corliss steam engines so vital to industry at the time. Weisel left the company and Vilter took complete control in the early 1880’s. The company’s big break was the commercial refrigerant process and once the beer industry adopted the technology the company prospered for years as the experts of commercial refrigeration.