A trans-national machine on the world stage: representing McCormick's reaper through world's fairs, 1851–1902

The McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. displayed its harvesting machinery at world fairs and agricultural fairs, using these events to build respectability for its machines and in support of sales and advertising claims. Records of the company reveal the firm's competitive behaviour at these fairs and their associated field trials for agricultural machinery. Analysis of company advertisements, catalogues, and correspondence on fairs and field trials reveals the way McCormick used these events, the extent and nature of international competition, and the nature of the world stage for industrial competition. Cyrus Hall McCormick, founder of the company, learning from his Crystal Palace success of 1851 and his even earlier experience with fairs in the USA, represented his reaper as a global product, made in America and internationally successful. Indeed, at the fairs McCormick's machines were embroiled in internecine warfare among an international brotherhood of manufacturers in pursuit of common goals and using a common repertoire of tactics, if not identical machines. This is because ‘American harvesting machines’ were a trans-national phenomenon. The paper concludes that globalisation was occurring in harvesting machinery and suggests that problems emerge from considering international competition in this industry as a contest among distinct national economies.