McCormick reaper
The McCormick reaper was a famous agricultural implement that sharply improved farm productivity in the 19th century.
His efforts built on more than two decades of tinkering by his father Robert McCormick Jr., with the aid of Jo Anderson, an enslaved African-American man held by the family.
[3] Cyrus successfully developed a modern company, with manufacturing, international marketing, and a sales force to sell his reapers and other farm tools.
By the 1850s, the original patents of both Hussey and McCormick had expired and many other manufacturers put similar machines on the market.
[11] In 1861, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a ruling on the invention of the polarizing reaper design.
It was ruled that the heirs of Obed Hussey would be monetarily compensated for his hard work and innovation by those who had made money from the reaper.
[9] Although the McCormick reaper was a revolutionary innovation for the harvesting of crops, it did not experience mainstream success and acceptance until at least 20 years after it was patented.
Only once Cyrus McCormick was able to acquire the rights to Hussey's cutter-bar mechanism (around 1850) did a truly revolutionary machine emerge.
[12] Other factors in the gradual uptake of mechanized reaping included natural cultural conservatism among farmers (proven tradition versus new and unknown machinery); the poor state of many new farm fields, which were often littered with rocks, stumps, and areas of uneven soil, making the lifespan and operability of a reaping machine questionable; and some amount of fearful Luddism among farmers that the machine would take away jobs, most especially among hired manual labourers.
Even though McCormick has sometimes been simplistically credited as the [sole] "inventor" of the mechanical reaper, a more accurate statement is that he independently reinvented aspects of it, created a crucial original integration of enough aspects to make a successful whole, and benefited from the influence of more than two decades of work by his father, as well as the aid of Jo Anderson, a slave held by his family.
[15] Cyrus travelled widely across the U.S., Canada and Europe to publicize the reaper with advertising and demonstrations, and set up local offices to handle sales and repair work.
He put his son Cyrus McCormick Jr. (1859–1936) in charge as they made the key decision to automate the factories with new machinery.
Instead of highly-paid blacksmiths building one reaper at a time, the factory now used semi-skilled laborers to help the new machines turn out identical parts and make low-cost mass production possible.
[23] After a few more years of squabbling the young International Harvester became a near monopoly in reapers, and a major factor in many other farm implements.
