Why was cyrus mccormick invention important

McCormick built a new factory with increased capacity and began to pursue overseas markets in earnest. By the early s, the company had expanded into markets as far away as Russia and New Zealand. His son, Cyrus Jr. Throughout the s and s the company retained its position as the leading agricultural equipment manufacturer, however it found itself increasingly challenged by competitors in a somewhat depressed market.

The company's chief rival was the Deering Harvester Company. By McCormick and Deering were nearly equal in sales. In he set up a factory in Chicago, founding what eventually became one of the greatest industrial establishments in the United States. An astute businessman, McCormick increased his sales with door-to-door canvassing and written guarantees for his ready-to-assemble machinery. McCormick amassed a large fortune and invested widely in later years in railroad and mining enterprises.

Using his father's incomplete model as a starting point, McCormick sketched out plans for a machine that would automatically cut, thresh, and bundle grain while being pulled through a field by horses. Within six weeks — before the harvest was over — he had built, field-tested, remodelled, and successfully demonstrated the world's first mechanical reaper to the public.

McCormick had singlehandedly increased farms' potential yield at least tenfold, with minimal effort by farmers. Astonishingly, they remained uninterested or at least unconvinced. For nine years, sales for the device were virtually zero. Farmers were leery of change and were put off by a machine that would later be described as a "contraption seemingly a cross between a wheelbarrow, a chariot, and a flying machine.

He also utilized novel business practices, including lenient credit for purchases, written performance guarantees "15 acres a day" , readily available replacement parts, and advertising that educated farming communities about the benefits of technology. Beginning in , the mechanical reaper finally caught on, so much so that McCormick was later forced to move production out of his family farm's blacksmith shop and into a factory in Chicago A Virginia farmer invented a mechanical reaper, then harvested profits in the Midwest's exploding grain belt, innovating credit, service, and sales practices that became essential parts of American big business.

Family Project In , twenty-two-year-old Cyrus McCormick took over his father's project of designing a mechanical reaper. Working on his family's Virginia farm, McCormick implemented features of the machine that remain in use today: a divider, a reel, a straight reciprocating knife, a finger, a platform to catch the cut stalks, a main wheel and gearing, and a draft traction on the front.

In , in the face of competition from other inventors, McCormick took out a patent and soon after, began manufacturing the reaper himself.