![]() ![]() When he pushed his strange-looking contraption across the board, it succeeded in clipping nearly every straw. Sarah Chenoweth, the seven-year-old daughter of the factory owner, watched him in fascination and remembered him later as “so very gentle in speech and manner that I never knew fear or awe of him.” To simulate a wheat field, Hussey had drilled holes in a large board, which Sarah helped him cover with straws. Hussey’s machine had first seen daylight in 1831, when its modest inventor wheeled a model for it (possibly full-scale) out of a room he had borrowed in a farm-implement factory in Baltimore. The tall, handsome Cyrus McCormick, born in Virginia, was a pioneer Chicagoan, self-confident, bold, and intensely combative. The Maine-born, Quaker-reared Hussey had sailed on a Nantucket whaler and wore a black patch over one eye, the result of an accident, but the piratical look was entirely deceiving: He was the mildest of men, kindhearted, fond of children, and self-effacing. The two inventors presented a study in opposites. Ever since, both had been claiming priority of invention and struggling for commercial dominance in the new field of mechanical harvesting. ![]() ![]() It had begun when Cyrus McCormick discovered that Obed Hussey had beaten him to the Patent Office with a machine designed to cut standing grain. McCormick and Hussey were on the road with a “great reaper war” that had been raging in the United States for seventeen years. Believing strongly that the South could not be defeated, he ironically contributed to its defeat through his reapers, which allowed the North to produce food while freeing men to fight in its armies.The British press and public were indeed witnessing a strange spectacle, for British inventors and engineers had long dominated agricultural technology. He spent much of the period from 1862 to 1864 in England and on the continent, returning in 1864 to run for Congress on a "stop the war" platform. McCormick was strongly pro-Southern in his views and through two newspapers that he owned, supported Southern views to such an extent that he eventually became unpopular in the pro-Lincoln city of Chicago where he lived. Throughout his life, McCormick contributed to the evangelical efforts of the Presbyterian Church, including large donations to the Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. The business was nearly equal in assets with the Deering Harvesting Company the decision was made to merge and form the International Harvester Company. ![]() During the Chicago Fire of 1871, his building was burned down, but he constructed a larger building with the idea of overseas shipping in mind.Ĭyrus Hall McCormick died on May 13, 1884. His company flourished when the railroad came to Chicago, which allowed him to ship his machines via rail. Cyrus took a look at his design and made a few changes to make the mechanical reaper fully functional and obtained a patent in 1834.Īfter numerous attempts to sell the product in his local area, he went to Chicago in 1847 to form the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. Cyrus McCormick's father invented the first horse-drawn crop reaper and was experimenting with a design for a mechanical reaper when he turned the experiment over to his son. ![]()
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