Editing Cyrus McCormick (section)

==Early life and career==
[[File:Cyrus Hall McCormick at National Portrait Gallery IMG 4390.JPG|left|thumb|''Cyrus Hall McCormick'' portrait, held by the [[National Portrait Gallery (United States)|National Portrait Gallery]] in Washington, D.C.]]
Cyrus Hall McCormick was born on February 15, 1809, in [[Raphine, Virginia]]. He was the eldest of eight children born to inventor [[Robert McCormick (Virginia inventor)|Robert McCormick Jr.]] and Mary Ann "Polly" Hall. As Cyrus's father saw the potential of the design for a mechanical reaper, he applied for a patent to claim it as his own invention. He worked for 28 years on a horse-drawn mechanical [[reaper]] to harvest grain, but was never able to produce a reliable version.

Building on his father's years of development, Cyrus took up the project aided by Jo Anderson, an enslaved African-American man held on the McCormick plantation.<ref name="Forbes">{{cite book |author1=[[Daniel Gross (journalist)|Daniel Gross]] |author2=[[Forbes|''Forbes'' Magazine]] Staff |date=August 1997 |title=Greatest Business Stories of All Time |edition=First |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_0471196533/page/24 24–32] |isbn=0-471-19653-3 |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_0471196533/page/24 }}</ref><ref name="Sluby">{{cite book |author=Patricia Carter Sluby |title= The Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=Wz-DTSXeLRYC&pg=PA282 |year=2004 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-275-96674-4 |page=282}}</ref> A few machines based on a design of [[Patrick Bell]] of Scotland (which had not been patented) were available in the United States in these years. The Bell machine was pushed by horses. The McCormick design was pulled by horses and cut the grain to one side of the team.

Cyrus McCormick held one of his first demonstrations of mechanical reaping at the nearby village of [[Steeles Tavern, Virginia]] in 1831. He claimed to have developed a final version of the reaper in 18 months. The young McCormick was granted a patent on the reaper on June 21, 1834,<ref name="iles">{{Cite book |author= George Iles |year = 1912 |edition= 2nd |title = Leading American Inventors |place =New York |publisher = Henry Holt and Company| url = https://archive.org/details/leadingamericani00ilesrich |pages=[https://archive.org/details/leadingamericani00ilesrich/page/276 276]–314 |chapter= Cyrus H. McCormick }}</ref> two years after having been granted a patent for a self-sharpening plow.<ref name="encyclopedia.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/science-and-technology/technology-biographies/cyrus-hall-mccormick|title=Cyrus Hall Mccormick |website=Encyclopedia.com|access-date=14 December 2021}}</ref> None was sold, however, because the machine could not handle varying conditions.
[[File:McCormick Reaper, 1845.jpg|thumb|Sketch of 1845 model reaper]]
The McCormick family also worked together in a blacksmith/metal smelting business. The [[panic of 1837]] almost caused the family to go into bankruptcy when a partner pulled out. In 1839 McCormick started doing more public demonstrations of the reaper, but local farmers still thought the machine was unreliable. He did sell one in 1840, but none for 1841.

Using the endorsement of his father's first customer, Khane Hale, for a machine built by McPhetrich, Cyrus continually attempted to improve the design. He finally sold seven reapers in 1842, 29 in 1843, and 50 in 1844. They were all built manually in the family farm shop. He received a second patent for reaper improvements on January 31, 1845.<ref name="iles"/>

As word spread about the reaper, McCormick noticed orders arriving from farther west, where farms tended to be larger and the land flatter. While he was in Washington, D.C. to get his 1845 patent, he heard about a factory in [[Brockport, New York]], where he contracted to have the machines mass-produced. He also licensed several others across the country to build the reaper, but their quality often proved poor, which hurt the product's reputation.