Reaper

Cyrus McCormick's mechanical reaper, 1831 Cutting grain with a cradle limited a man to about two acres a day, and a ripe crop does not wait. Cyrus McCormick publicly demonstrated his horse-drawn reaper in 1831, took his first patent in 1834 and moved production into a Chicago factory in 1847, close to the prairie farms that would buy it. His written guarantees promised 15 acres a day. Credit is genuinely contested. Patrick Bell's reaper was at work in Scotland by 1828, and Obed Hussey patented a rival in 1833. Whoever was first, the reaper broke the harvest bottleneck that had capped how much grain a family could plant.