Exterior of the Blacksmith Shop where the First Reaper was Built.
Cyrus McCormick's plough was a success that encouraged him to take hold of the more difficult problem of the reaper. He found that some device, such as his father's, would cut grain after a fashion, provided it was in perfect condition and stood up straight; the moment it became matted and tangled and beaten down by wind and rain the machine was useless. Other devices had been arranged whereby a fly-wheel armed with sickles slashed off the heads of the wheat, leaving the stalks; but here again such a machine would work only when the field was in prime condition. He determined that no device was of any value which would not cut grain as it might happen to stand, stalk and all. After months of labor in his father's shop, making every part of the machine himself, in both wood and iron, as he said, he turned out, in 1831, the first reaper that really cut an average field of wheat satisfactorily. Its three great essential features were those of the reaper of to-day—a vibrating cutting-blade, a reel to bring the grain within reach of the blade, a platform to receive the falling grain, and a divider to separate the grain to be cut from that to be left standing. This machine, drawn by horses, was tested in a field of six acres of oats, belonging to John Steele, within a mile of Walnut Grove. Its work astonished the neighboring farmers who gathered to witness the test. The problem of cutting standing grain by machinery had been solved.
There were, however, certain defects in the reaper which caused Cyrus McCormick not to put the machine on the market. All the cog-wheels were of wood. There was no place upon it for either the driver or the raker. The former rode on the near horse and the latter followed on foot, raking the grain from it as best he could. But it cut grain fast, and both father and son were so impressed by its possibilities as foreshadowed in even this crude affair, that for the next few years they devoted their time, money, and thoughts to it. Robert McCormick was as enthusiastic as his son, and he is rightly entitled to a share of the honor, for his invention of 1816 turned the attention of his son to the problem and pointed out the radical errors to be avoided. A year after its first trial, with certain improvements, the reaper cut fifty acres of wheat in so perfect and rapid a manner as to insure its practical value beyond all doubt. The self-restraint shown by McCormick in refusing to sell machines until he was satisfied with them shows the man. The patent was granted in 1834, but for six years he kept at work experimenting, changing, improving, during the short periods of each harvest. In a letter to the Commissioner of Patents, on file in the Patent Office, Mr. McCormick said: "From the experiment of 1831 until the harvest of 1840 I did not sell a reaper, although during that time I had many exhibitions of it, for experience proved to me that it was best for the public as well as for myself that no sales were made, as defects presented themselves that would render the reaper unprofitable in other hands. Many improvements were found necessary, requiring a great deal of thought and study. I was sometimes flattered, at other times discouraged, and at all times deemed it best not to attempt the sale of machines until satisfied that the reaper would succeed."
Interior of the Blacksmith Shop where the First Reaper was Built.
About 1835 the McCormicks engaged in a partnership for the smelting of iron ore. The reaper, as a business pursuit, was yet in the distance, and the new iron industry offered large profits. The panic of 1837 swept away these hopes. Cyrus sacrificed all he had, even the farm given him by his father, to settle his debts, and his scrupulous integrity in this matter turned disaster into blessing, for it compelled him to take up the reaper with renewed energy. With the aid of his father and of his brothers, William and Leander, he began the manufacture of the machine in the primitive workshop at Walnut Grove, turning out less than fifty machines a year, all of them made under great disadvantages. The sickles were made forty miles away, and as there were no railroads in those days, the blades, six feet long, had to be carried on horseback. Neither was it easy, when once the machines were made, to get them to market. The first consignment sent to the Western prairies, in 1844, was taken in wagons from Walnut Grove to Scottsville, then down the canal to Richmond, Va.; thence by water to New Orleans, and then up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to Cincinnati.
The great West, with its vast prairies, was the natural market for the reaper. Upon the small farms of the East hand labor might still suffice for the harvest; in the West, where the farms were enormous and labor scarce, it was out of the question. Realizing that while his reaper was a luxury in Virginia, it was a necessity in Ohio and Illinois, Cyrus McCormick went to Cincinnati in the autumn of 1844 and began manufacturing. At the same time he made some valuable improvements and obtained a second patent. The reaper had become known and the inventor rode on horseback through Illinois and Wisconsin, obtaining farmers' orders for reapers, which he offered to A.C. Brown, of Cincinnati, as security for payment, if he would use his workshops for manufacturing them. McCormick was enabled also to arrange with a firm in Brockport, N.Y., to make his reapers on a royalty, and this business provided the great wheat district of Central New York with machines. In 1847 and 1848 he obtained still other patents for new features of the reaper.