Cyrus McCormick is granted a patent for…
June 1834 CE
Born on February 15, 1809 in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Cyrus is the eldest of eight children born to inventor Robert McCormick Jr. (1780–1846) and Mary Ann "Polly" Hall (1780–1853).
As Cyrus' father sees the potential of the design for a mechanical reaper, he had applied for a patent to claim it as his own invention.
He had worked for twenty-eight years on a horse-drawn mechanical reaper to harvest grain; however, he had neverbeen able to reproduce a reliable version.
Cyrus had taken up the project, aided by Jo Anderson, an enslaved African American on the McCormick plantation at this time.
A few machines based on a design of Patrick Bell of Scotland (which had not been patented) were available in the United States in these years.
The Bell machine is pushed by horses.
The McCormick design is pulled by horses and cuts the grain to one side of the team.
Cyrus McCormick had held one of his first demonstrations of mechanical reaping at the nearby village of Steeles Tavern, Virginia in 1831.
He claims to have developed a final version of the reaper in eighteen months.
The young McCormick is granted a patent on the reaper on June 21, 1834, two years after having been granted a patent for a self-sharpening plow.
However, none are sold, because the machine cannot handle varying conditions.
People
Groups
Commodities
Regions
Northern North America
View →Subregions
