Cyrus McCormick — Mechanical Reaper, Agricultural Revolution

**Cyrus Hall McCormick** didn't just invent a farm machine — he invented the modern business model. Born in 1809 in Rockbridge County, Virginia, to a farmer and inventor father who had spent years trying (and failing) to build a mechanical grain reaper, young Cyrus took his father's failed design, rebuilt it, and demonstrated a working mechanical reaper in 1831. The machine was crude but functional: it could harvest as much grain in a day as five men with scythes. That single innovation, refined over decades, would transform American agriculture from subsistence farming into the world's most productive food system.