Western Culture Global Presents

The Top 100 Heroes of Western Culture
These individuals have most contributed to replacing ignorance with knowledge, savagery with civilization, disease with health, tyranny with liberty, poverty with abundance, and despair with happiness.



#53: Cyrus McCormick (1809-1884)

Cyrus McCormick (1809-1884) was an American who invented the reaper, the first automated agricultural machine.

Prior to McCormick, grain was harvested in an inefficient and manual process that had been used since the dawn of agriculture. McCormick’s invention made farming many times more efficient.

This resulted in a global shift of labor from farmlands to cities, freeing hundreds of millions of people to apply their talent and energy to engineering, medicine, business and countless others fields that enrich our lives.

McCormick exemplified the essence of a Western culture hero: Through rational thought and bold action he challenged and ultimately smashed the status quo by paving a new road to a more advanced civilization.



Go to #54: James Watt


Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — Home
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