McCormick Reaper Centennial Source Material -- 1954

              seen the one locomotive in the country—a recent importation from England. No hum and roar of giant factories, for there were as yet no factories. No whir of the propeller blades of airplanes, for in 1831 such creations were far below the horizon of man's mind. No chugging motors, no warning auto horns, not even a dream of the machine age that was coming.
The quiet of the countryside—and practically all America was countryside—was broken only by such sounds as the songs of birds, the lowing of cattle, and the creaking of ox carts. Perhaps the men in the harvest fields broke the monotony of their labors with a song. Perhaps not! Harvest¬ ing was nothing to sing about in 1831.  It was pushing labor. Day after day men with strong backs and strong arms swung the heavy cradle through the grain, laying it down for other men to bind into sheaves.  They were working against time, these men, trying to save every wisp of precious wheat lest nature should suddenly decide to recall her bounty.  Stooping and swinging, always swinging and stooping, while the harvest sun poured down its relentless heat to wilt strong bodies and hearts.  But these workers were accustomed to this battle of the harvest. Had they not always garnered the grain in this way? Had not their forefathers thus for centuries made use of the flail and the reaping hook? Yes, long before the time when Ruth gleaned in the fields of Boaz.  And were not practically all people compelled to work in the harvest field that they might have bread enough until the next harvest? The ways of the harvest in 1831 were ways known to all men, ways that had been tried by time immemorial.
Into this picture came the song of the reaper.  Cyrus Hall McCormick, a young Virginia farm boy, had watched his father make several vain efforts to perfect a mechanical device that would cut grain. He somehow came to believe that he could solve the problem. He was only twenty-two. Gifted with natural mechanical ability and rare courage and perseverance, he started work on his reaper in May.  The forge shop on his father's farm found him busy early and late.  There, with the help of a faithful slave, he fashioned the wood and iron parts. John McCown, a skilled blacksmith on South River, made to the boy's order a knife with a saw-toothed edge. McCormick had a strange idea that if he could make this knife move back and forth fast enough and could hold the grain up to it, it would cut just as a saw cuts.  To hold the grain up to the knife, and to lay it down smoothly after cutting, he planned a revolving device called a "reel." Back of the knife he built a platform of boards, which would catch the cut grain and from which it could be raked to the ground. He believed that he could make his knife vibrate and his reel revolve by gears and belts which would get their motion from one large wheel as it traveled over the ground.
By July his idea had assumed tangible form, and his reaper was ready for its initial trial. A field of grain had been left standing near Steele's Tavern—a few acres which the cradlers could quickly cut after the new con¬ traption had failed, just as all other similar devices had failed.
But, miracle of miracles! McCormick's reaper moved down the field, drawn by one horse; the grain fell in a steady stream on the platform; a farm hand, stumbling and half running to keep up with the machine, raked the cut grain onto the stubble. The few assembled friends and neighbors heard the vibrating knife, the gears, and the reel singing for the first time the victorious song of the reaper—the song that was to become America's song of progress and plenty.
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