Lawnmower History

The first Lawn mower was invented by English engineer Edwin Beard Budding in 1827. Budding’s mower was designed primarily to cut the lawn on sports grounds and expansive gardens as a superior alternative to the scythe. His patent of 25 October 1830 described “a new combination and application of machinery for the purpose of cropping or shearing the vegetable surfaces of lawns, grass-plats and pleasure grounds.” The patent went on to state, “country gentlemen may find in using my machine themselves an amusing, useful and healthy exercise.” It took ten more years and further innovations to create a machine that could be worked by donkey or horse power, and sixty years before a steam-powered lawnmower was built.

In an agreement between John Ferrabee and Edwin Budding dated May 18, 1830, Ferrabee paid the costs of development, obtained letters of patent and acquired rights to manufacture, sell and license other manufacturers in the production of lawnmowers.

One of the first Budding and Ferrabee machines was used in Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens in London, in 1831.

Manufacture of lawn mowers began in the 1850s. By 1862, Farrabee’s company was making eight models in various roller sizes up to 900 mm (36 inches). He manufactured over five thousand machines until production ceased in 1863. Thomas Green produced the first chain driven mower in 1859, named the Silens Messor. Around 1900, one of the best known English machines was the Ransomes’Automaton, available in chain- or gear-driven models. JP Engineering of Leicester, founded after World War I, produced a range of very popular chain driven mowers. About this time, an operator could ride behind animals that pulled the large machines. These were the first riding mowers.

The rise in popularity of sports such as lawn tennis, croquet, cricket, football and rugby helped prompt the spread of the invention. Lawn mowers became a more efficient alternative to simply relying on gardeners wielding the scythe (which, when placed in incompetent hands, left unsightly scars on and in the ground) or bare spaces caused by domesticated grazing animals.

James Sumner of Lancashire patented the first steam-powered lawnmower in 1893. His machine burned petrol and/or paraffin oil (kerosene) as a fuel. After numerous advances, the machines were sold by the Stott Fertilizer and Insecticide company of Manchester and later, the Sumner’s took over sales. The company they controlled was called the Leyland Steam Motor Company. Numerous manufacturers entered the field with gasoline-driven mowers after the turn of the century.

The first grass boxes were flat trays but took their present shape in the 1860s. The roller-drive lawnmower has changed very little since around 1930. Gang mowers, those with multiple sets of blades, were built in the United States in 1919 by a Mister Worthington. His company was taken over by the Jacobsen Corporation but his name is still cast on the frames of their gang units.

Rotary mowers were not developed until engines were small enough and powerful enough to run the blades at a high speed.

In the 1930s, Power Specialties Ltd. introduced a gasoline-powered rotary mower. One company that produced rotary mowers commercially was the Australian company, starting in 1947. Early in the 1930s, experiments in design of rotary mowing equipment were conducted by a farmer in the Midwest region of the United States, by the name of C.C Stacy. His concept was the use of a toothed circular saw blade mounted horizontally on a vertical shaft, which would be suspended at a height of approximately 2″ and moved across a lawn to cut grass and other lawn vegetation at a uniform height. The power for his experimental mower was an electric motor. The success of Stacy’s design was limited by 2 factors: the relatively small diameter of the saw blades he used for his experiments, which were about 8″; and the fact that toothed circular saw blades were not really an optimum cutting tool for free standing grass and other plants. Stacy did not come up with any idea for a cutter similar to modern rotary mower straight blades, and soon dropped his experiments with rotary mowing. He never submitted any of his ideas for patent, although drawings of his ideas still exist and are in the possession of family members. Late in life, Stacy, deceased in 1993, asserted that his ideas for rotary mowing equipment originated with him, and he had never seen or heard of any mowing equipment other than cylinder or reel type mowers prior to formulating his ideas. He lamented jokingly that if he had pursued and patented the concept, his family name might have become as well known as Jacobson, that of a prominent mower manufacturer in the first half of the 20th century.

On May 9, 1899, John Albert Burr, an African American inventor, patented [patent 624,749] an improved rotary blade lawn mower. Burr designed a lawn mower with traction wheels and a rotary blade that was designed to not easily get plugged up from lawn clippings. John Albert Burr also improved the design of lawn mowers by making it possible to mow closer to building and wall edges.