GREENWICH, N.Y. — With autumn comes the harvest. Farmers are busily chopping and hauling, or will soon be doing so within the next few weeks. As we enter this important time in the farmer’s year take a look back at the story behind an invention that changed the harvest and American agriculture: the mechanical reaper.

Cyrus McCormick, a blacksmith in Virginia, developed the first practical mechanical reaper to harvest grain in 1831 when he was only 22 years old. His machine, at first a local curiosity, proved to be enormously important.

Many Americans, who look back from the 20th and 21st centuries to praise the gifted poets and distinguished novelists of the fourth and fifth decades of the 19th century, have failed to see the mechanical geniuses of those 20 years.

Cyrus McCormick, an American inventor, revolutionized agriculture in the 19th century by inventing the mechanical reaper, a device that dramatically increased the efficiency of harvesting crops.

A tractor reaper machine, also known as a combine harvester, is a versatile agricultural machine designed for harvesting various crops such as wheat, barley, rice, oats, and more.

By the 1830s, farmers had already been tinkering for centuries with ways to improve on harvesting with the hand-held scythe, used by the 70% of Americans who worked in agriculture. It took one person 14 hours to cut and bundle an acre of wheat.

The earliest practical reaping machines were introduced in the 1830s by father-son Robert and Cyrus McCormick of Steele’s Tavern, Virginia, Obed Hussey of Cincinnati, and Montgomery County, New York farmer Enoch Ambler.

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