By Laura Jean Whitcomb

The first lawnmowers had four legs. Animals, mainly sheep, grazed around the homestead to keep the grass short. George Washington at Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson at Monticello kept their lawns manicured by having plenty of sheep around.

But the traditional green lawns of today didn’t exist in America until the 18th century. According to American-Lawns.com, the area just outside the front door of a typical rural home was typically packed dirt or a cottage garden that contained a mix of flowers, herbs and vegetables.

At the turn of the century, formal lawns with short and tended grass became popular in France and England. Many of the wealthy had sweeping green lawns, called pleasure grounds, across their estates. Americans who could afford to travel overseas returned home and began to plant their own English lawns.

Edwin Beard Budding (1795-1846), an engineer in Gloucestershire, England, began to think about how to cut a lawn. According to the BBC, it took 50 men with scythes to cut the lawns at Blenheim Palace, home of the 11th Duke of Marlborough and birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill, and the lawns had to be cut every 10 days. But the scythe wasn’t a very consistent tool. As the sharp blade hit the grass, it either cut it properly or just bent it back. Or, if the blade went a bit too low, left a bare patch.

Budding knew that if the grass was trapped between two blades, like a pair of scissors, it would be easier to cut. But who wants to hand cut an entire lawn using shears? While working at a textile mile Budding was inspired by the nap-cutting machines, the spiral blades workers ran over newly woven cloth to give it a smooth finish. He patented his idea in 1830.

Budding went into partnership with John Ferrabee, the owner of Phoenix Iron Works. They started making machines “for the purpose of cropping or shearing the vegetable surface of lawns, grass plats and pleasure grounds.” Budding was in charge of engineering and problem solving, while Ferrabee headed up sales and patents.

The first Budding lawnmower was 19-inch cylinder mower, also known as a reel mower. “The reel mower shears grass in the same way a pair of scissors work: The cutting blades are riveted or welded to a series of spiders which are located on a central shaft,” says James Ricci from the History & Preservation Project at North Farms in Haydenville, Mass. “As the shaft turns, the blades come in contact with the nonmoving bed knife to cut the blades of grass.” The only difference between Budding’s machine and the reel mower of today is the material: The original machine was made of cast iron.

Two of the earliest mowers were sold to Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens in London and the Oxford Colleges. But Budding and Ferrabee were shrewd businessmen. According to the Old Lawnmower Club’s “History of the Lawnmower,” Budding and Ferrabee allowed other companies to build copies of their mower under license. The most successful was Ransomes of Ipswich, a company that began making mowers as early as 1832.

With 2H acres of lawn, W F Carnegie of Scotland could not use a Budding mower. He engaged local engineer James Shanks to make a wider machine that could be pulled by two men or a pony. Budding’s patent only covered England and Wales, so Shanks patented his design in 1842 in Scotland, which had its own patent system. These wide reel mowers were pulled by horses wearing oversize leather booties to prevent lawn damage.

By 1840, more than 1,000 Budding mowers had been sold. Budding died of a stroke in 1846. Either Budding’s patents lapsed or the Patent Office started to allow lawn mower design improvements to be patented, because other companies began to introduce their own machines in the 1850s. Customers could now choose lawnmowers with either a gear or a chain drive, or pay a bit extra for a grass collection box.

The U.S. continued to import English manufactured reel lawn mowers until the first U.S. patent was granted to Amariah Hills in 1868. But it was Elwood McGuire of Richmond, Ind., that brought the lawnmower to the American masses. In 1870, he designed a lightweight, relatively inexpensive machine that quickly became a commercial success.

By 1885, the U.S. was building 50,000 lawnmowers a year and shipping them worldwide, according to Cyberlawn.com. Now the British market was seeing an influx of American manufactured machines with improvements from inventors such as John Alburt Burr. In 1899, he patented an improved rotary blade lawnmower with traction wheels and a rotary blade designed to not get plugged up with lawn clippings.

According to the “History of the Lawnmower,” motorized mowers appeared in the 1890s as lightweight petrol engines and small steam power units became available. “Early gasoline engines were available from 1897 by Coldwell, USA, but the first production line model was not available in England until 1902 when Ransomes of Ipswich sold their machine to Cadbury’s of Birmingham (the chocolate manufacturers),” says Andrew Hall, archivist at The Hall & Duck Trust, U.K. collectors of vintage lawn mowers.

But these modern ideas did not become popular until later. Many of these motorized machines were heavy and expensive, and the mechanical nature of the mowers meant that the operator had to be trained. After the Second World War, however, the power mower began to make an appearance. The Depression was over, and many families were buying homes for the first time. The gas and electric powered lawnmowers were made of steel, a stronger construction that was inexpensive to purchase.

By the 1950s, the reel mower took a backseat to the power rotary mower, a single rotating blade under a cutting deck, powered by gas or electric engine. The technology became more reliable, the designs smaller and the cost less expensive. The introduction of plastic components in the 1960s reduced costs further.

Greensmiths.com states that U.S. homeowners spend more than $17 billion on outdoor home improvements. More than 26 million households hired a green professional, according to a 2000 Gallup survey, and this number is expected to grow. Today’s outdoor power equipment is not only helping homeowners perform more earth friendly chores, like mulching and composting yard waste, but it is also being manufactured to be more air friendly with low emission engines and new cordless electric technologies.

“We are already getting a glimpse of our mowers of tomorrow. The simplest models are small robotic mowers that run continuously on your lawn. They are solar powered and make very little to no sound. They are equipped with a
computer that memories the shape and size of your lawn for more accurate mowing,” writes Greensmiths, a Texas-based landscaping company. “The newest mower uses lasers instead of blades to cut the turf. The precision of the cut will be within one millimeter of the desired set height. Neither the robotic mowers or the laser mowers produce any emissions so they are both environmentally friendly.”