7 Cyrus McCormick 7

absorb all of his energy, however. He became active in

the Democratic Party and in the Presbyterian Church,

establishing the McCormick Theological Seminary in

Chicago.

In 1871 the Chicago Fire gutted his factory. Then—

more than 60 years old, his fortune long since made—he

rebuilt. When he died, his business was still growing. In

1902 the McCormick Harvesting Company joined with

other companies to form International Harvester Company,

with McCormick’s son, Cyrus, Jr., as its first president.

Elisha Graves Otis

(b. Aug. 3, 1811, Halifax, Vt., U.S.—d. April 8, 1861, Yonkers, N.Y.)

E

lisha Graves Otis was the American inventor of the

safety elevator.

A descendant of a James Otis who emigrated from

England to New England in 1631, the young Otis grew up

in Vermont and, at age 19, moved to Troy, N.Y., and later to

Brattleboro, Vt., working at various jobs. From 1838 to 1845,

in Brattleboro, he manufactured wagons and carriages and

then moved his family to Albany, N.Y., where, while

employed as a master mechanic in a bedstead factory, he

invented several labour-saving machines. In 1851 he was

in Bergen, N.J., again as master mechanic in a bedstead

factory. The Bergen firm sent him to Yonkers, N.Y., in 1852

to operate a new factory and to install its machinery. There

he designed and installed what he called the “safety hoist,”

the first elevator equipped with an automatic safety device

to prevent it from falling if the lifting chain or rope broke.

Prior to this invention, the poor reliability of the ropes

(generally hemp) used at that time made lifting platforms

unsatisfactory for passenger use. Otis’s device incorporated

a clamping arrangement that gripped the guide rails on

which the car moved when tension was released from the