![]() ![]() These included a combination mower-reaper and a mower designed to save drudgery and speed production of hay in areas where dairying was becoming important. Sales went up worldwide.ĭuring the late 1850s and 1860s, McCormick and his brothers, Leander and William, both partners in the firm, added machines designed to cut hay. After receiving the highest award at the fair, the Council Medal, he started a campaign of introducing his machine to other countries at fairs and exhibitions. Looking for markets overseas, he exhibited his reaper at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London in 1851. He expanded the plant, adding machinery, steam power and manpower. ![]() He built his factory on the north bank of the Chicago River in the following year 700 reapers were built and sold. But after the harvest of 1844, McCormick set out on horseback to see what chances for sales might be found in the broad prairies of the Midwest.īy 1847, he decided to place his headquarters in Chicago, which then had a population of 16,859. The family’s log blacksmith shop was the first factory. McCormick obtained his first patent on June 21, 1834.Ĭontinuing his experiments through 1841, McCormick sold seven reapers in 1842. In the meantime Obed Hussey, a Maryland inventor, obtained a patent for a reaper. McCormick was not satisfied with this first reaper. Neither McCormick nor any of those on the field or watching could have had any idea of what lay ahead how eventually all field operations of American farmers, and farmers over most of the world, would be performed through the use of machinery. ![]() Jo Anderson, a slave, raked the platform clear of cut grain. McCormick walked behind the reaper, which was drawn by a single horse ridden by a boy. He first showed it publicly in July 1831, in a field near Steele’s Tavern, not far from the valley of Walnut Grove, where the family farm lay. Cyrus Hall McCormick, a 22-year-old Virginian, gave America its first step toward farm mechanization when he invented the reaper 150 years ago this spring. ![]()
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