To overcome lingering doubts among farmers, McCormick also developed unique business practices, including letting farmers buy on lenient credit terms, offering written money-back guarantees, making replacement parts readily available, and educating farmers through advertising about the benefits of new technology. He sold 29 reapers that year and sales continued to rise. McCormick had long ago modified his machine to cut in wet weather and his reaper performed flawlessly.įrom that day forward McCormick’s reaper was hailed as the best of the many competing designs. On the day of the contest, however, it rained and the challenger’s reaper jammed on the wet wheat. They would have a contest to see which reaper performed best. One big break came in 1843 as a result of a challenge issued by a rival reaper manufacturer. Farmers were indeed impressed with the reaper, but they saw it mainly as a sideshow, rather than a vital piece of equipment they ought to buy.īut McCormick never lost hope and kept at it until his fortunes began to rise in the early 1840s. At first, he tried to drum up interest by staging demonstrations at county fairs. He would need to convince the very skeptical American farmer to invest several hundred dollars in a what one of them derided as a “contraption seemingly a cross between a wheelbarrow, a chariot, and a flying machine.”Īs a result, McCormick discovered a second talent - marketing - to go with his mechanical skills. Yet as many an inventor soon discovers, McCormick found that the mere act of invention did not guarantee success. It allowed for a much faster harvest - often crucial in times of bad weather - and eliminated the need to hire expensive (or out on the remote plains, non-existent) farm labor. The harvested grain was then collected in a cradle. As it passed through a field, sharp blades moved back and forth severing stalks of wheat. The reaper was a device on small wheels pulled by a horse. When McCormick learned in 1833 of Hussey’s announcement that he too had produced a working reaper, he immediately filed for a patent and received it on June 21, 1834. Several other inventors, most notably Obed Hussey, were busily working on their own models. As with later efforts by others to invent the telephone, light bulb, and radio, McCormick was not alone in his quest to invent the mechanical reaper. In this effort, he may very well have been assisted by a slave named Joe Anderson who worked in the family blacksmith shop. Taking his father’s prototype, he added several new features and made a few design changes to produce a working model. It was in July 1831 when Cyrus, still only 22 years old, achieved a breakthrough in the design of the reaper. So as young Cyrus grew up, he gained from his father a thorough knowledge of farming and a keen interest in inventing. One particular project in which he invested years of effort and thought was the development of a mechanical harvester, or reaper. His father liked to tinker with machinery and over the course of his life he patented several useful farming implements. In 1779, Cyrus’s grandfather moved to Virginia, where his father, Robert McCormick, was born in 1780.Ĭyrus grew up on his father’s vast 532-acre farm, which included a sawmill, distillery, and two grain mills. His Scots-Irish ancestor, Thomas McCormick, had emigrated from Ulster to Pennsylvania in the 1730s, while his mother’s family traced its lineage back to 1640s Armagh. When that eventually happened, McCormick became a rich man and America emerged as the world’s foremost agricultural producer.Ĭyrus McCormick was born in 1809 in Rockbridge, County, Va. Years of labor lay ahead before the McCormick reaper was transformed from merely a good idea into a reality. It was a welcome reward for years of toil and trouble, but as McCormick was to find out, his work was far from done. To his delight, it stated that the patent he submitted for his invention - a device for mechanically harvesting wheat and other crops - had been granted. One hundred sixty-eight years ago this week, on June 21, 1834, Cyrus McCormick received a letter from the U.S.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |