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International Harvester
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The comprehensive story of International Harvester
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A topic often covered in America's classrooms is that of Cyrus McCormick and his reaper. In that case, International Harvester Farm Equipment could be a source book for historians. It's difficult to imagine that any other work could provide as comprehensive a story of International Harvester and how that company came to be. With extensive illustrations, appendices, headings and detail, this book tells the story of one company's legacy.
The authors state the book's purpose as being 'to record and preserve in one document some of the key events in the company's development, and to display and describe selected innovative, as well as traditional, farm and industrial tractors and equipment that contributed to IH leadership in the industry.' Rest assured they do that, and then some.
With more than 600 photos, illustrations, and reprints of old advertisements from the archives of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and the McCormick-International Harvester corporate collection, the book is well illustrated. Carefully documented illustrations track the evolution of the company's technology and equipment. The reader sees the tone of the visuals change from truly historic to the humdrum 'data sheets' of the '60s and '70s. Also of note is the book's appendix, which provides detailed statistics for the large compilation of products in the McCormick-Intemational Harvester family. Mind you, that includes Farmall tractors, IH harvesters and crop machinery, Cub Cadet lawn tractors, and even International Harvester four-wheel drive vehicles.
The company's early history is quite interesting, and, on occasion, entertaining.
'Certainly not all agreed that Cyrus McCormick was the first inventor of the reaper,' the author
Hussey, after all, saw things differently, as shown in this early account attributed to him:
'I can prove my reaper to have been entirely successful as early as 1833, while my friend McCormick was so unsuccessful between 1831 and 1834 that his father and family advised him to abandon his reaper. He sold no machines until 1840, and his machines were of no practical value 'til 1845, while my reapers had been perfectly successful for 12 years.'