| Made in Chicago: The Reaper Finds Its Market |
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Cyrus McCormick invented his "mechanical man" in Virginia in 1831, but came to Chicago in 1847 to be closer to potential customers in the Midwestern farmland. His four-story Chicago factory would mass-produce reapers for decades to come. By 1860, McCormick Reaper Works was making over four thousand reapers a year. Wheat plantings doubled where it was in use, and Illinois became the leading wheat-producing state in the country. McCormick's family joined elite Chicago society; in 1895, his son Harold would marry a Rockefeller, John Sr.'s daughter Edith.
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