This firm, based in Halberstadt, was founded in 1829 by Heinrich Dehne, an ironmaster. In 1853 his son, Friedrich, assumed control of the enterprise and began the manufacture of agricultural implements and equipment; in 1861 it introduced a seed drilling machine of its own design. By 1867 the firm had begun the manufacture of steam traction engines and mobile steam boilers, and had introduced a more extensive line of agricultural machinery, including such items as ploughs, cultivators, hoes, fertilizer spreaders, beet lifters, tedders, harvesters, threshing machines and food processing machines, all of proprietary and innovative design.
The firm moved to larger facilities in 1908, opening a factory in Quedlinburger Straße where more than eight hundred workers were employed. Following the Great War the firm concentrated on the development of potato harvesting machines, which it first introduced in 1924; this greatly relieved the labour burden in harvesting the potato crop and insured the firm financial success in the postwar period. It remains one of the larger and most innovative firms in the agricultural machinery sector to the present time.