Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Cyrus McCormick
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
==Move to Chicago== In 1847, after their father's death, Cyrus and his brother [[Leander J. McCormick]] (1819–1900) moved to Chicago, where they established a factory to build their machines. At the time, other cities in the [[midwestern United States]], such as [[Cleveland, Ohio]]; [[St. Louis, Missouri]]; and [[Milwaukee, Wisconsin]] were more established. Chicago had the best water transportation from the east over the [[Great Lakes]] for his raw materials, as well as railroad connections to the west where most of his customers would be.<ref name="Casson_1909">{{Citation |last=Casson |first=Herbert Newton |year=1909 |title=Cyrus Hall McCormick: His Life and Work |publisher=A. C. McClurg & Company |location=Chicago |lccn=09028139 |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.12822/page/n2/mode/2up}}</ref> When McCormick tried to renew his patent in 1848, the [[U.S. Patent Office]] noted that a similar machine had already been patented by [[Obed Hussey]] a few months earlier. McCormick claimed he had invented his machine in 1831, but the renewal was denied.<ref name="cheap">{{cite book |editor=Follet L. Greeno | year=1912 | title=Obed Hussey: Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap |publisher= The Rochester Herald publishing Company |url= https://archive.org/details/obedhusseywhoofa00greeuoft }}</ref> William Manning of [[Plainfield, New Jersey]] had also received a patent for his reaper in May 1831, but at the time, Manning was evidently not defending his patent.<ref name="iles"/> McCormick's brother [[William Sanderson McCormick]] (1815–1865) moved to Chicago in 1849, and joined the company to take care of financial affairs. The McCormick reaper sold well, partially as a result of savvy and innovative business practices.<ref name="Forbes"/> Their products came onto the market just as the explosive expansion of railroads offered inexpensive wide distribution. McCormick developed marketing and sales techniques, forming a wide network of salesmen trained to demonstrate the operation of his machines in the field, as well as to get parts quickly and repair machines in the field if necessary during crucial seasons in the farm year. A company advertisement was a take-off of the ''[[Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way]]'' mural by [[Emanuel Leutze]]; it added to the title: "with McCormick Reapers in the Van."<ref name="Michael Adas 2006 79">{{cite book |author=Michael Adas |title= Dominance by design: technological imperatives and America's civilizing mission |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=yHh6gwshyKIC&pg=PA79 |year=2006 |publisher= [[Harvard University Press]] |isbn= 978-0-674-01867-9 |page= 79 }}</ref> In 1851, McCormick traveled to London to display a reaper at the [[The Great Exhibition|Crystal Palace Exhibition]]. After his machine successfully harvested a field of green wheat while the Hussey machine failed, he won a gold medal and was admitted to the Legion of Honor. His celebration was short-lived after he learned that he had lost a court challenge to Hussey's patent.<ref name="query.nytimes.com">{{cite news |title= England: Closing of the Great Exhibition—The Ballon Hoax—Egyptian Railroad—Mr. McCormick's Reaping Machine |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1851/11/05/297732542.pdf |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] | date= November 5, 1851 |access-date= January 18, 2011}}</ref>
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)