The First Successful Reaper.
The McCormick Reaper of 1845 in the Field, with a Seat Added for the Raker
Formerly the raker walked by the side of the machine.
In 1831 came McCormick’s reaper, the first practical machine of its kind ever taken into the field. It was crude at first, but improved from year to year. Although McCormick’s reaper was not patented until 1834, one year after the patent granted to Obed Hussey for his reaper, young McCormick gave a public exhibition in Virginia three years before, in 1831. It was in the fall of that year when Cyrus McCormick hitched four horses to his machine, which had been built in the old blacksmith shop at Steel’s Tavern, and drove into a field of late oats on the farm of John Steele, adjoining his father’s. The reproduction of an old lithograph depicting this scene indicates the interest of the neighbors in this event. Although the United States had been established more than fifty years past, this was the first grain that had ever been cut by machinery. McCormick’s machine continued to operate to the surprise of everyone and in less than half a day had reaped six acres of oats—as much as six men would have done by the old-fashioned method.
This was not the first attempt of a McCormick to solve the problem of harvesting wheat by machinery, for Robert McCormick, the father of Cyrus, had, himself, worked on a machine of this kind as far back as 1816. His father tried it again in 1831 and abandoned it, and in that same year the son Cyrus took up the work and started the world toward cheaper bread.
McCormick Reaper of 1858
The first practical reaper taken into the field in 1831 embodied the essential parts of the reaper with which we are familiar. It had a platform for receiving the grain, a knife for cutting it, supported by stationary fingers over the edge, and a reel to gather it. The driver of the machine rode one of the horses, while the man who raked off the grain walked by the side of the machine.