Highlights Archives
New McCormick-IHC Images Now Online
Cyrus Hall McCormick (1809-1884) demonstrated the first successful horse drawn reaper in 1831. In 1847 he established a company in Chicago that quickly became the world leader in the agricultural equipment industry. That company merged with its major competitors in 1902 to form the International Harvester Company.
The McCormick-International Harvester Collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society contains millions of items documenting McCormick, his family and his companies. The collection includes hundreds of thousands of images dating from the late 1840s to the 1980s. The collection also contains thousands of advertising images from catalogs, brochures, calendars, handbills, and posters.
Over three thousand of these images are now available online, thanks in part to a project funded by the International Harvester Collectors Club. The images show a broad range of subjects, including the McCormick family, factories, workers, farms, farm work, rural life, rural schools, domestic life, the trucking industry, urban storefronts, dealerships, wars, military production, agricultural machinery, tractors, trucks, construction equipment, refrigerators, and a variety of International Harvester corporate activities.
The Society also has an on-line exhibition featuring 50 advertising posters selected from the McCormick-International Harvester Collection. The Posters in the Art of the Draw exhibition were chosen to represent the depth and breadth of that collection. They range in date from 1849 to 1951, and represent a wide variety of printing formats, graphic styles, manufacturers, implements, and marketing approaches.
:: Posted May 24, 2005
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