![]() Purpose: To celebrate 100th anniversary of Cyrus Hall McCormicks invention of reaper, 'first successful attempt at mechanized agriculture.' History: McCormick born Feb. Scene depicting two men, one mounted, using horse. McCormick amassed a large fortune and invested widely in later years in railroad and mining enterprises. CYRUS HALL MCCORMICK 1809 INVENTOR 1884 OF THE REAPER. In 1874 he set up a factory in Chicago, founding what eventually became one of the greatest industrial establishments in the United States.Īn astute businessman, McCormick increased his sales with door-to-door canvassing and written guarantees for his ready-to-assemble machinery. After Robert abandoned the project in 1831, young Cyrus started building a reaper based on a different principle. He started American Harvester, which became an international company, and in his. The traditional story of the McCormick reaper begins with Cyrus' father, Robert McCormick, who had been trying to develop a workable reaper for several years at Walnut Grove, the family's plantation in Rockbridge County, Va. Six years later he began to license its manufacture in other parts of the country. McCormick, Cyrus (1809-1884) International Harvester CompanyOverviewDespite having had little formal education, Cyrus McCormick was the inventor of the first successful reaper, which ultimately revolutionized farming not only in America but throughout the world. He is generally credited with the development (from 1831) of the mechanical reaper, which revolutionized the harvesting of grain. Patenting his invention in 1834, after Obed Hussey had announced in 1833 the construction of a reaper of his own, McCormick started to manufacture the machine on the family estate in 1837. 15, 1809, Rockbridge county, Va., U.S.died May. In July 1831, McCormick succeeded where his father had failed, producing a model reaper with all the essential components of later commercial machines. His time-saving invention allowed farmers to more than double their crop size and spurred innovations in farm machinery.īorn in Rockbridge County, Virginia, McCormick derived his interest in invention from his father, a Virginia landowner who patented several improved farming implements and worked without success for many years to perfect a mechanical reaper. All his work eventually paid off – by 1851, Cyrus McCormick's reaper invention was an international sensation.Cyrus Hall McCormick invented the mechanical reaper, which combined all the steps that earlier harvesting machines had performed separately. The first commercially successful reaper was built in 1831 by Virginia-born inventor Cyrus Hall McCormick (1809 1884), who patented it in 1834 and first sold it in 1840 in Virginia. ![]() McCormick spent years making improvements to the mechanical reaper invention and coming up with business innovations to boost sales (including credit for purchases, performance guarantees, replacement parts and advertising). Despite the amazing potential of the invention, most farmers remained uninterested. See Cyrus McCormick’s Reaper and the Industrialization of Farming, 22 38. This first machine as used in the harvest of that year. McCormick designed and invented the first successful reaper in a small blacksmith shop at Steel’s Tavern, Virginia. This great industry, the largest of its kind, was established in 1831 when Cyrus H. McCormick did qualify for inclusion in Daniel Gross, Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Time (New York, 1966). MCCORMICK REAPER MANUFACTORY II Life Span: 1872-1962. In 1834, inventor Cyrus McCormick took out a patent on his invention and, soon after, began manufacturing the reaper himself. Tedlow, Giants of Enterprise: Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built (New York, 2001), 1. ![]() McCormick's invention automatically cut, threshed and bundled grain while being pulled through a field by horses. In 1831, twenty-two-year-old Cyrus took over his father's project and, within six weeks, he had built, field-tested, remodeled and successfully demonstrated the world's first mechanical reaper. The initial idea and design for the reaper actually came from Cyrus McCormick's father, Robert, who worked on the invention for 16 years. ![]() Prior to this invention, reaping was a painstaking process (done by hand with a scythe) that limited a farm's harvest. Not long after Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin, Cyrus McCormick invented another significant agricultural invention that revolutionized farming: the mechanical reaper.
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