Cyrus McCormick

Cyrus Hall McCormick was born on a farm in Rockbridge County, Virginia. His father, Robert, had spent years trying to build a machine to cut grain. Cyrus took up the problem and in 1831 demonstrated a horse-drawn reaper with a cutting blade, a reel to hold the stalks, and a platform to catch the cut grain. Enslaved workers on the McCormick farm, including a man named Jo Anderson, helped build and test it. He patented the reaper in 1834. At first sales were slow, but in 1847 McCormick moved his business to Chicago, close to the wide prairies of the Midwest, and built a large factory. He sold reapers on credit, offered written guarantees, used advertising and trained agents, and provided repair parts, methods that later became common in American business. One man with a reaper could harvest as much wheat as several men with hand tools, which helped open the prairies to large-scale farming. His factory burned in the Chicago fire of 1871 and was rebuilt. He died in 1884.

Faith: Active in the Presbyterian church; he endowed the McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica