![]() At one time, probably before the Civil War, McCormick had almost 100 competitors, and yet he became the largest producer of reapers in America. How? His edge over his competition was simple: He was a farmer who invented, while his rivals were inventors who knew little of farming. In the end, Cyrus McCormick outmaneuvered them all. During the next two decades, numerous American inventors entered the field, literally and figuratively, each patenting reaper improvements and each manufacturing a few-or a few dozen-machines. This was the logical birthplace for a mechanical reaper, and in the 1830s, several Americans patented their designs. Over the centuries, various attempts were made to conceive such a machine, but the abundance of cheap labor-serfs, slaves or peasants-mitigated the potential economic rewards of replacing muscle with machinery.īut in the vast continent that was America, conditions were different. In the days of the Roman Empire, Pliny the Elder described an early reaping device consisting of an ox-pushed cart with a wooden comb that would cut stalks of grain. Since the earliest days of farming, people had talked of developing a tool that would ease the backbreaking drudgery of harvesting with sickles. In doing so, he brought about the greatest revolution in farming since the invention of the plow. ![]() What McCormick did do, however, was more important than mere conception: He was the first to demonstrate the labor-saving value of a reaper-and the first person to sell it on a widespread basis, across America and in other nations. Other men built reapers before McCormick, born 200 years ago in Rockbridge County, and other men manufactured them before and during his time. This combined with his marketing innovations would make him synonymous with a revolutionary farming machine.įorget what you learned in school: While historians credit Cyrus Hall McCormick as being the “father of the mechanical reaper,” the quiet farmer from the Valley of Virginia did not actually invent the famous grain-harvesting machine. Lots of people made and sold reapers in the 19th century-but McCormick made his more efficient than anybody’s. Cyrus McCormick, born 200 years ago in Virginia, was described by some as “cold, imperious and calculated to inspire awe.” Perhaps that’s because he spent his life obsessed with a grain-harvesting contraption known as a reaper.
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