Cyrus McCormick, 1809–84, is best known as the inventor of the reaper. He was born in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. His father, a blacksmith, had invented a variety of agricultural devices that made farmers' lives easier, and had worked without success for more than two decades on a reaping machine. Cyrus McCormick took his invention in a direction his father had not pursued, and was able to demonstrate a successful machine in the summer of 1831. He did not patent the machine until 1834, after another inventor announced the creation of a competing reaper. For more than ten years, McCormick made reapers for the farmers in his area, but in 1847, he moved to Chicago to be closer to the nation's wheat-growers.

Innovative Business Practices

There, McCormick built a large factory that became the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. The reaper was introduced to Great Britain and to Europe four years later. Despite stiff competition, the McCormick prevailed as the result of innovative business practices that later became the mainstay of the American consumer products industry. The company gave buyers a no-haggle pricing system, offered credit and financing, provided money back guarantees on the product's performance, and manufactured replacement parts that were interchangeable. Because the reaper and other McCormick products were introduced onto the market just as the American railroad system was being expanded, they could be distributed easier into distant markets. McCormick came up with new sales and marketing methods, and set up a large network of trained salesmen who could demonstrate the operation of the machines in the field.

McCormick invented, built, and distributed a device that greatly reduced the amount of farm labor required to produce grain. In 1830, it took twenty hours to harvest an acre of wheat; in 1895, it took less than a single hour to do the same job.

Famous Quotations

William H. Seward, who served as the U.S. secretary of state during the Civil War, and was later responsible for the purchase of Alaska, said that because of McCormick's invention, "the line of civilization moves westward thirty miles each year."

Philanthropy

McCormick provided financial backing for a number of Presbyterian schools and seminaries. Because of his strong support of the Presbyterian Seminary of the Northwest in Chicago, that institution was renamed the McCormick Theological Seminary after he died.