McCormick was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, February 15, 1809. His father, Robert McCormick, a farmer of inventive mind, worked long to produce a reaper. In 1831 he put a reaping machine in the field for trial, but it failed to work and its inventor was completely discouraged. Against the counsel of his father, Cyrus McCormick began a study of the machine that had failed, to determine and to overcome the causes of failure. He produced another reaper, and in the late harvest of 1831 he tested it in the wheat fields of his father's farm and in some fields of oats belonging to a neighbor. The machine was a success. McCormick's invention, soon destined to revolutionize agriculture, was combated for the alleged reason that it would destroy the occupation of farm laborers during the harvest season. It was some years before McCormick himself realized the importance of his invention, and he did not take out a patent on it until June 21, 1834. It was not until 1840 that he began manufacturing reapers for the market. In that year he constructed one and sold it to a neighbor. For the harvest of 1843 he made and sold twenty-nine machines. These had all been built upon the home farm by hand, the workmen being himself, his father, and his brothers. In 1844 he traveled with his reaper from Virginia to New York State, and from there through the wheat fields of Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, and Missouri, showing the machine at work in the grain and enlisting the interest of agricultural men. [Illustration: A MODERN REAPER This machine cuts, threshes, winnows, and sacks the wheat] In 1847 and 1848 Chicago was but a trading village. McCormick, foreseeing its future growth, located his reaper factory there. In that factory he constructed about nine hundred reapers for the harvest of 1848. In 1851 he exhibited his invention at the World's Fair in London. The London _Times_ facetiously called it "a cross between a wheel-barrow and a flying machine." Later the same paper said of the reaper that it was "the most valuable contribution to the Exposition, and worth to the farmers of England more than the entire cost of the Exposition." In 1848 McCormick's patent on the reaper expired. Although his claim as the inventor was clearly established, and the commissioner of patents paid him the highest compliments in words for his invention, a renewal of the patent was denied. Other reapers had been made in the meantime, and others have been brought out subsequently. It is an historical fact, however, and one now seldom questioned, that every harvesting machine which has ever been constructed is in its essential parts the invention of Cyrus Hall McCormick. Besides being a great inventor and successful business man, McCormick was a liberal philanthropist. He gave freely to educational and religious institutions. He died at his home in Chicago, May 13, 1884.