Cyrus Hall McCormick and the Reaper |
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acres per day agri agricul agricultural machinery American attended field trials badly-lodged wheat binder blacksmith Brockport CALIFORNIA Cyrus Hall Canal cates of Archibald cereal culture chine Commissioner of Patents cradle crop cultivation Cyrus H Cyrus Hall McCormick developed economic Erie Canal farmers grain harvest of 1831 honor Illinois improvements inventor involve subsequent invention labor-saving inventions land machine to ap manufacturers McCor McCormick reaper McCormick subjected McCormick's first patent McDowell afterwards gover mechanical construc mechanical reaper ment mick Reaper neighboring county town Ohio operate patent June 21 platform prairies prior invention embodied proceeded in unbroken production reaper of 1831 reaping machine reel Reuben Gold Thwaites Robert McCormick scheme that succeeded scythe seen our ingenious September 28 stalks parallel substitute for McCormick's succeeded or survived threshing threshing machine tion trans-Alleghany tural University of California Valley of Virginia vast vindicated and exhibited Walnut Grove Farm West Wisconsin witnessed the reaper
Popular passages
Page 245 - M'Cormick's reaping-machine: — " In agriculture it is, in my view, as important, as a labour-saving device, as the spinning-jenny and power-loom in manufactures. It is one of those great and valuable inventions which commence a new era in the progress of improvement, and whose beneficial influence is felt in all coming time.
Page 234 - ... at once sought new and cheap lands ; finding these upon the frontier, which was not then far from tide-water. Gradually, as the pressure on available land became greater, the younger generations of Pennsylvania ScotchIrish moved from their restricted wheat fields southwestward through the troughs of the Alleghanies, either tarrying on the upper waters of the Potomac or pressing on to the deep and fertile valleys of southwest Virginia and North Carolina. On their part, the South Carolina and Georgia...
Page 249 - Cyrus McCormick is an inventor, whose fame, while he is yet living, has spread throughout the world. His genius has done honor to his own country, and has been the admiration of foreign nations, and he will live in the grateful recollection of mankind as long as the reaping machine is employed in gathering the harvest." Perfecting the Harvester This second rebuff did not in the least discourage Mr. McCormick. 'We find him still industriously attending field trials, improving his machine in a hundred...
Page 245 - Such is a brief history of the proceedings before the board of extension on McCormick's application. I will now give my views with regard to the merits of the invention itself. I do not hesitate to say that it is one of very great merit. In agriculture, it is, in my view, as important, as a labor-saving device, as the spinning-jenny and power-loom in manufactures. It is one of those great and valuable inventions which commence a new era in the progress of improvement, and whose beneficial influence...
Page 235 - In his farm workshops he fashioned an ingenious hemp-brake and cleaner, to be operated by horse-power, and it was successfully used by several of the valley folk, as well as by many in the great hempgrowing state of Kentucky. A clover sheller, a blacksmith's bellows, a hydraulic machine, a threshing machine, and a hillside plow were also among his contributions to rural mechanics. As early as 1809 he began to devote much time in efforts to devise a reaping machine, and appears to have spasmodically...
Page 248 - Writing of this glorious success, Mr. Seward said : " So the reaper of 1831, as improved in 1845, achieved for its inventor a triumph which all then felt and acknowledged was not more a personal one than it was a national one. It was justly so regarded. No general or consul, drawn in a chariot through the streets of Rome by order of the Senate, ever conferred upon mankind benefits so great as he who thus vindicated the genius of our country at the World's Exhibition of Art in the metropolis of the...
Page 253 - The reaper is to the North," he said, "what slavery is to the South. By taking the places of regiments of young men in the Western harvest fields, it releases them to do battle for the Union at the front, and at the same time keeps up the supply of bread for the nation and the nation's armies.
Page 250 - Of late, inventors have directed their attention with peculiar interest to the improvement of implements of agriculture, and many labor saving machines have been patented which are of the highest utility to the husbandman. These are rapidly increasing and it is scarcely possible to conjecture to what extent the labor of the agriculturist may be diminished and the production of the country increased by these improvements. Already the processes of sowing, of mowing, and of reaping are successfully...
Page 248 - as having done more for the cause of agriculture than any other living man.
Page 242 - ... the sickles were made forty miles away ; the blades, six feet in length, being transported on horseback. In this manner the work was carried on in the old blacksmith shop at Walnut Grove — the first two machines being sold in 1840 ; two others in 1841, seven in 1842, twenty-nine in 1843, and fifty in each of the years 1844 and 1845.