Returning to the U.S., McCormick still faced substantial challenges. McCormick was elected into the French Academy of Sciences for "having done more for agriculture than any other living man." He won the Gold Medal at the London Crystal Palace Exposition of that year, then went on to stun audiences in Hamburg, Vienna, and Paris. In 1851, McCormick's machine became an international sensation. McCormick's machine meant that the prairies of the Midwest could now become the "breadbasket" of the nation. He also utilized novel business practices, including lenient credit for purchases, written performance guarantees ("15 acres a day"), readily available replacement parts, and advertising that educated farming communities about the benefits of technology.īeginning in 1841, the mechanical reaper finally caught on, so much so that McCormick was later forced to move production out of his family farm's blacksmith shop and into a factory in Chicago (1847). For nine years, sales for the device were virtually zero.įarmers were leery of change and were put off by a machine that would later be described as a "contraption seemingly a cross between a wheelbarrow, a chariot, and a flying machine." Undaunted, McCormick spent ten years making improvements, earning his first patent along the way (1834). Astonishingly, they remained uninterested or at least unconvinced. McCormick had singlehandedly increased farms' potential yield at least tenfold, with minimal effort by farmers. Within six weeks – before the 1831 harvest was over – he had built, field-tested, remodelled, and successfully demonstrated the world's first mechanical reaper to the public. Using his father's incomplete model as a starting point, McCormick sketched out plans for a machine that would automatically cut, thresh, and bundle grain while being pulled through a field by horses. Because reaping was a much more painstaking process than sowing, even farmers with land and seed to spare were forced to limit their crop to what they could reap in a given season. The reapers mowed down the standing grain with a hand-swung scythe, and the binders followed behind them, tying the crop into bales, which were then carted away, usually for storage in barns. When Robert McCormick finally gave up on producing a working model, in the early fall of 1831, his son took over the challenge.Īt that time, grain was harvested by the same manual process that had been used since the dawn of agriculture. Meanwhile, McCormick's father, Robert, was working in the farm's smithy on an invention of his own: a horse-drawn reaping machine. At the age of 15, he invented a lightweight cradle for carting harvested grain (1824). As a boy, McCormick had a talent for both agriculture and inventing. He grew up on his family's 532-acre farm, "Walnut Grove", which was located north of Lexington, Virginia.
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