Born in Port Huron, Michigan, he attended Albion College, then worked as an electrician.

He worked briefly for the Thompson Electric Company, then went into business as an independent electrician in Providence, Rhode Island.

[3] In the Broadway run of The Burglar and the Lady in 1906, a horse and buggy crashed through a window,[4] and the villain had an exploding watch.

[1] For A Mile a Minute in 1912, McCormick and magician Howard Thurston designed an effect to represent a train speeding across the stage, which they patented.

[1] He expanded the effect to include the ship bursting into flames for a vaudeville sketch called On the High Seas,[2] and repeated this in his final production as an author, Shipwrecked, in 1924.