The lawn mower is one of those things that seems as if it has just always been around. Most people have probably never had to live without some kind of mechanical lawn mowing implement – otherwise, all those teenage summers mowing the neighbor’s lawns for money would have been so much worse! Though, admittedly, our collective upper body strength would be so much more on point if we had to take a scythe to the lawn every week. Talk about getting in your cardio. But I digress.
Have you ever wondered where the lawn mower came from? What was the inspiration that gave flight to this technological innovation? Well, get ready to go on an adventure into the world of Edwin Beard Budding and friends to discover how this marvel of modern machinery was born.
A Love of Football
Edwin Beard Budding, who incidentally didn’t seem to have a beard, was an early 19th-century engineer at a textile mill in England. See, Edwin was a fan of football (soccer to Americans), but instead of going down to the pub every Saturday to enjoy a pint with his mates and talk soccer, he spent the afternoon toiling with a scythe to cut the overgrown grass on his lawn. I’m assuming as he was sweating over the scythe and daydreaming about soccer he thought to himself something along the lines of, “There has to be a better way!”
His love of soccer and probable hatred of the scythe led him to put two and two together at the textile mill one day. See, he noticed a machine at the mill that would shear a nap of velvet, which reminded him of his Saturday morning scythe struggles and boom! The reel mower was born.
Budding developed a cylinder with a series of blades arranged around the outside. The cylinder was connected to a handle to help push it. You would recognize this today as the mower your grandfather uses as a lawn ornament that looks like it might just induce a heat stroke on the mildest of days. But hey! It’s ecologically sound, at least – and helps improve your cardio.
Enter Elwood McGuire
Around 1870, an Indiana man named Elwood McGuire had a “there’s got to be a better way” moment himself. He developed a lighter and easier to use version of the push mower with fewer moving parts, effectively bringing push mowing to the yearning masses.
By 1885, 50,000 lawn mowers a year were being built across the United States and shipping around the globe. As more and more people began to own lawn mowers, then more and more people started having their own “better way” moments. First, horses were attached to pull mowers, but that usually got a well-intentioned man in trouble when the horse trampled his wife’s flowers. Then, a steam-powered version arrived on the scene, but it just wasn’t practical. When it takes longer to generate the steam in the boiler than it takes to mow the lawn, then that’s a problem!
The Colonel
Gasoline powered vehicles began emerging around the turn of the century and it wasn’t long before that technology was applied to the lawn mower by a man named Colonel Edwin George. This was around 1919, but by the end of the 1930s, this gas-powered mower was not getting a lot of love, mostly due to a little something called the Great Depression.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, gas-powered mowers experienced a boost in popularity. And the rest, as they say, is history!
Today, there are all kinds of new mowing technologies emerging. I think it’s safe to say that the mower, in all its manifestations, is here to stay. After all, there’s nothing quite as satisfying as freshly cut lawn and that feeling will never go out of style! This Saturday, go down to the pub and raise your glass to Edwin Beard Budding and his love for soccer. Without it, you might just be at home cutting your lawn by hand.
