Cyrus McCormick Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Cyrus Hall McCormick (February 15 1809 - May 13, 1884) was famous as the inventor of the mechanical reaper in 1831.He was born at Walnut Grove, his family farm in what is now Roane County, West Virginia. His father invented numerous labor-saving devices for agricultural use, but after repeated efforts had failed in his attempts to construct a successful grain cutting and binding machine. In 1831, Cyrus took up the problem, and after careful study constructed a machine which was successfully employed in the late harvest of 1831 and patented in 1834. In 1847 the inventor, and now skilled businessman, moved to Chicago, where he established large centralized works for manufacturing his agricultural implements. The McCormick reaper sold well as a result of saavy and innovative business practices. He offered no-haggle pricing, credit and financing, money back gaurantees on performance, and interchangeable replacement parts. His products came onto the market just as the development of railroads offered wide distribution into distant market areas. He developed marketing and sales techniques, developing a vast network of trained salesmen able to demonstrate operation of the machines in the field. William H. Seward said of McCormick's invention that owing to it "the line of civilization moves westward thirty miles each year." Numerous prizes and medals were awarded for his reaper, and he was elected a corresponding member of the French Academy of Sciences, "as having done more for the cause of agriculture than any other living man." The invention of the reaper made farming far more efficient, and resulted in a global shift of labor from farmlands to cities. The McCormick factories were later the site of urban labor strikes that led to the Haymarket Square riots in 1884. McCormick edited the Chicago Times until 1861, when he sold the paper to Wilbur F. Storey. He died in Chicago, where Addy was at one point, with his company passing on to his son, Cyrus McCormick, Jr