Painting by Bernarda Bryson (1903-2004) of Cyrus McCormick standing in front his reaper, while holding a newspaper with the headline “Boom in Wheat!” It was not until 1834, after a failed attempt to market a hemp-breaking machine invented by his father, that Cyrus resumed work on the reaper and applied for a patent. The younger McCormick then set the invention aside for several years to pursue other business interests. During the summer of 1831, however, his son Cyrus built a reaper that performed successfully. Robert McCormick used tools and materials available in the farm’s blacksmith shop and did not succeed. Shenandoah Valley The problem of a mechanical reaper had intrigued McCormick’s father, Robert McCormick, who had attempted to build one several times. McCormick developed his reaper on a twelve-hundred-acre family farm of Walnut Grove in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. For example, in Great Britain, Thomas Brown Brown, Thomas manufactured and marketed a mechanical reaper before 1820, but its sales were slow because farm labor in Britain was more plentiful and cheaper than in the United States, and because British farms typically had small fields that made the use of mechanical reapers difficult. Other inventors in the United States and Great Britain produced working models of mechanical reapers before McCormick did, but none of their inventions proved commercially successful. McCormick, Cyrus Hall Reaper Inventions reaper Agriculture reapers Wheat and reapers McCormick Invents the Reaper (Summer, 1831) Invents the Reaper, McCormick (Summer, 1831) Reaper, McCormick Invents the (Summer, 1831) McCormick, Cyrus Hall Reaper Inventions reaper Agriculture reapers Wheat and reapers United States Summer, 1831: McCormick Invents the Reaper Agriculture Summer, 1831: McCormick Invents the Reaper Inventions Summer, 1831: McCormick Invents the Reaper Manufacturing Summer, 1831: McCormick Invents the Reaper Government and politics Summer, 1831: McCormick Invents the Reaper Science and technology Summer, 1831: McCormick Invents the Reaper Deere, John Hussey, Obed Manny, John H.Ĭyrus Hall McCormick is generally credited with the invention of the first reaper containing the basic elements that are still used in modern reaping machines. Labor shortages on American farms made the development of mechanical reapers a pressing need during the early nineteenth century. Before the development of mechanical harvesters, farmers had to be careful not to plant more wheat than they could harvest with the limited supply of labor available to them. After it ripens, its husks begin to open and begin rotting if they are not harvested within ten days. Wheat is a crop that historically presented a special challenge to farmers because of its short harvest period. Cyrus McCormick’s invention of the earliest commercially successful mechanical reaper dramatically reduced the need for labor and made large-scale wheat production possible.
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