Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I am an executive producer with I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and what the tech is going on? Um, I'm
Speaker 1: work shopping new taglines. Uh. I was going to have
Speaker 1: a brand new episode ready for you today and then
Speaker 1: a an unexpected home emergency happened. Nothing serious, everybody's okay.
Speaker 1: I mean it's serious, but it's everybody's okay, which is
Speaker 1: the most important thing. But unfortunately it meant that it
Speaker 1: did a real number on my ability to research right
Speaker 1: and record a brand new episode. So sadly, the first
Speaker 1: episode of two is actually going to be an episode
Speaker 1: from this episode published February twenty one. Fun fact, February
Speaker 1: fift that's the uh that's the higher date of one
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland at well back then it was how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. So uh yeah, we'll be coming up
Speaker 1: on an anniversary again soon. Anyway, this episode is one
Speaker 1: of the ones that I'm really proud of. I had
Speaker 1: a lot of fun doing it. It is titled How
Speaker 1: Medieval Warfare Lead to the Lawnmower. Hope you enjoy. While
Speaker 1: I've been recording shows from my home for nearly a
Speaker 1: year now. I still occasionally get reminded about how things
Speaker 1: can be different from when I was working in the office.
Speaker 1: The most part, things are kind of like this is
Speaker 1: this is the normal now. However, at the office, there
Speaker 1: is no chance that my dog will be barking in
Speaker 1: the background while I record, and so far, I think
Speaker 1: I've mostly avoided having him show up on episodes of
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff, but only because I've edited around it. Keep
Speaker 1: telling him if he wants to be on a show,
Speaker 1: he should get his own podcast, But I'm also scared
Speaker 1: that if he does that, he'll get way more popular
Speaker 1: than me. You're also not likely to hear other extraneous
Speaker 1: noises at the office because there are studios are recording
Speaker 1: studios are all in rooms that don't have a window
Speaker 1: to the outside world built into them, though you can
Speaker 1: still occasionally pick up sounds of folks who are chatting
Speaker 1: in the office outside the studios, because well, at least
Speaker 1: in the office, we used to be a pretty chatty lot.
Speaker 1: So if you listen to any of the stuff shows,
Speaker 1: if you listen very carefully, you might occasionally hear the
Speaker 1: sounds of people talking outside that studio room. That's because
Speaker 1: there are desks and stuff just on the other side
Speaker 1: of those doors. But one noise that has been a
Speaker 1: particular issue for me while working at home has been
Speaker 1: the sound of the landscape crew that's working on the
Speaker 1: courtyard outside townhouse I live in. They always seem to
Speaker 1: show up just as I'm getting ready to record. And
Speaker 1: then I thought, Hey, how about I talk about the
Speaker 1: history of lawnmowers and how they work. That could be
Speaker 1: a great topic and turn that frustration I feel into
Speaker 1: an episode. So let's begin with some etymology, which I
Speaker 1: am now being told is not the study of bugs,
Speaker 1: but rather the origin of words. So we think of
Speaker 1: a lawn, you know, as a grassy area like a yard,
Speaker 1: typically covered by turf grass in fact, and that is
Speaker 1: somewhat kept in an orderly fashion, partly by cutting the
Speaker 1: grass fairly low. But where does the word lawn come from? Well,
Speaker 1: the word derives from a Middle English word of lander,
Speaker 1: meaning an unwitted field or an open space in the woods,
Speaker 1: like a glade. Thanks Miriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Now, y'all,
Speaker 1: my no Back in my college days, I studied medieval literature,
Speaker 1: including Old and Middle English texts, and so immediately I
Speaker 1: thought of our old pal Jeffrey Chaucer, known for composing
Speaker 1: the Canterbury Tales, though then he thoughtlessly went off and
Speaker 1: died before he finished writing them. But he also wrote
Speaker 1: a poem called Parliament of Fouls that mentions a Lawnda,
Speaker 1: which hey, that poem also references Valentine's Day later on,
Speaker 1: and since we just had Valentine's Day, this episode is
Speaker 1: now timely. So the whole poem is far too long
Speaker 1: for me to read. It's like seven lines long, but
Speaker 1: I will give you the little bit of it that's
Speaker 1: about the LAWNDA. And the passage goes like this, and
Speaker 1: then a lawanda upon the Hilla of Flores was set.
Speaker 1: This nobler goddess natier of branches were here Harlis and
Speaker 1: her bores he wrought after Haircraft, and here measure. Now,
Speaker 1: this passage goes on a bit longer, but honestly, I
Speaker 1: would just be indulging my own love of medieval English lit,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to cut it off. There. What that
Speaker 1: passage means in modern English is and in an opening
Speaker 1: in the woods, on a hill covered with flowers sat
Speaker 1: the goddess Nature. Her home was made of branches and
Speaker 1: arranged according to her art. So it's a pretty little passage.
Speaker 1: And here Londa refers to something you might encounter if
Speaker 1: you were walking through the countryside, through the wooded forests
Speaker 1: of old England or old France, and then at one
Speaker 1: point you encounter an opening in the forest where there
Speaker 1: aren't any trees. So how did it come to mean
Speaker 1: the word lawn that we use today? Well, to understand
Speaker 1: that we have to talk about war. Yes, just as
Speaker 1: many a homeowner has suspected lawn care and warfare go
Speaker 1: hand in hand. Okay, So you got your big medieval
Speaker 1: big wig types. You know, you've got your kings and
Speaker 1: your lords and your earls and whatnot. And occasionally these
Speaker 1: types would lead large groups of warriors to conquer other
Speaker 1: medieval big wig types, something like, Hey, those guys over
Speaker 1: there got it pretty good, so why don't we go
Speaker 1: over there and take their stuff and make it our stuff?
Speaker 1: And so the world turns upon such thoughts. But it's
Speaker 1: not enough to conquer the people who live on the
Speaker 1: other side of the hills or river or ocean or whatever.
Speaker 1: You got to hold on to the land that you've claimed, right,
Speaker 1: And that means creating fortifications, preferably in places where you
Speaker 1: can get a pretty good look at your surroundings to
Speaker 1: make sure no other medieval big wigs get the same
Speaker 1: bright idea you got, and then they come to take
Speaker 1: your stuff and it used to be someone else's stuff,
Speaker 1: because you know there's always a bigger fish, as it were.
Speaker 1: So you build up your forts or your castles as
Speaker 1: it were, to protect your assets. Your castles are your
Speaker 1: defense system where you can pull back if necessary if
Speaker 1: enemies come to call. But you can't really be on
Speaker 1: the lookout for the next bully if you can't see
Speaker 1: the armies for the trees, right, and so it gets
Speaker 1: to chopping. You chop, chop, chop all those trees down
Speaker 1: around your fortifications so that you can see folks from
Speaker 1: a long way off if they're approaching, and you can
Speaker 1: prepare if there's an imminent attack. It also helps if
Speaker 1: you know you don't leave trees around for people to
Speaker 1: cut down and turn into stuff like battering ramps. So
Speaker 1: there's that element as well. So rather than wooded fields,
Speaker 1: you have grassy ones. And this is the origin of
Speaker 1: the lawn though back in those days the lawns weren't exactly,
Speaker 1: you know, pristine. So to maintain the lawns, you'd either
Speaker 1: have livestock go out to the fields to graze, thus
Speaker 1: cutting back the grass by eating it, as well as
Speaker 1: fertilizing the land on occasion, you know, when nature called,
Speaker 1: or you could have laborers go out to the fields
Speaker 1: with hand tools like scythes and sickles to cut back
Speaker 1: the grass manually so that it wasn't too high. A
Speaker 1: sickle is a handheld tool that has a handle, typically
Speaker 1: made out of wood, and on the business end, you've
Speaker 1: got a curved blade sticking out from the handle, making
Speaker 1: kind of like a almost like a half moon, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of crescent shaped, and the blade is also typically
Speaker 1: at an angle relative to the handles, sort of how
Speaker 1: a razor has an angle to it for the purposes
Speaker 1: of shaving aside is similar, but it's much larger. It's
Speaker 1: a two handed tool. The grim reaper carries a scythe,
Speaker 1: and cutting with either a sickle or a scythe involves
Speaker 1: making horizontal passes, typically at the base of the grass,
Speaker 1: and you cut in an arc from one side to
Speaker 1: the other, and big arcing swings, so semicircular swings and
Speaker 1: those swings only go in direction. The blade is is
Speaker 1: sharpened on the inside curve, not the outside curve, and
Speaker 1: you're typically going right to left because the handle for
Speaker 1: the forward hand on a scythe is meant to be
Speaker 1: held with the right hand. The left hand is meant
Speaker 1: to hold the scythe further back on the on the handle,
Speaker 1: So in other words, this is yet another right handed tool.
Speaker 1: Scything can actually be pretty efficient. There are actually there's
Speaker 1: some great videos on YouTube of people who have really
Speaker 1: gotten skilled with scything and they can make short work
Speaker 1: of an overgrown lawn like they can cut that stuff
Speaker 1: down quickly. I suggest you check it out. It's just
Speaker 1: neat to watch. And the angle of the blade determines
Speaker 1: how short the side will cut the grass. Using a
Speaker 1: scythe with a good blade angle, a skilled wheelder can
Speaker 1: cut the grass very low and pretty efficiently too, and
Speaker 1: you would have the bottom part of the blade actually
Speaker 1: making contact with the ground as you swing the scythe
Speaker 1: from right to left. They also tend to have to
Speaker 1: rake up the yard afterwards to gather up all the trimmings.
Speaker 1: Were usually looking at fields that have you know, grass
Speaker 1: that's quite high, like maybe a foot high or maybe taller,
Speaker 1: so you need to have something to to rake up
Speaker 1: all the clippings that you've left behind. I've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of videos of folks using sides in order to
Speaker 1: cut back on, you know, relying on fossil fuels, and
Speaker 1: to make use of the trimmings in various ways, from
Speaker 1: compost to making hay while the sun shines. In some videos,
Speaker 1: I've seen folks use scythes more effectively than someone who
Speaker 1: is using a mechanical push mower or a weed whacker,
Speaker 1: though power mowers do tend to be more efficient than
Speaker 1: a scythe, So a push mower, like a mechanical one
Speaker 1: where there's no motor, it's just from human power that
Speaker 1: versus a scythe, you might actually see someone be more
Speaker 1: effective with the side than with the push mower. Weed
Speaker 1: whackers same thing, uh, the push mower that has a
Speaker 1: motor on it, those tend to win out in the end.
Speaker 1: So it really does start to make you wonder, however,
Speaker 1: why the heck did anyone think to invent the mechanical
Speaker 1: lawnmower in the first place. If a scythe can be
Speaker 1: as efficient, why would anyone ever think about making a
Speaker 1: mechanical invention that does effectively the same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: The first lawnmowers were purely mechanical, relying on gears and
Speaker 1: blades that were mounted on a drum like cylinder. And
Speaker 1: if those aren't more efficient than a scythe why would
Speaker 1: you bother? And the answer is drumroll please vanity. See.
Speaker 1: While in the medieval era soldiers wanted to get a
Speaker 1: good view of what might be coming at him throughout Europe,
Speaker 1: particularly in France and England, the strategic usefulness of castle's
Speaker 1: gradually decline in the Middle Ages, largely because of advancements
Speaker 1: in artillery. Cannons could make very short work of castle
Speaker 1: walls and so warfare began to change and castles weren't
Speaker 1: part of that. But you still had all these hoity
Speaker 1: toity types who like the idea of a well maintained lawn. Again,
Speaker 1: mostly in France and England, that's really where this idea
Speaker 1: took hold, and this was definitely an issue of vanity,
Speaker 1: particularly when it came to showing off your prestige. Lawns
Speaker 1: are not natural environments when you get down to it,
Speaker 1: they can be environmentally unfriendly. They represent a much more
Speaker 1: limited biome than a natural grassy or wooded area. It's
Speaker 1: an artificial construct. It's really an example of humans cutting
Speaker 1: back nature to suit our own esthetics. And really it
Speaker 1: was only the hoity toity types doing this, because maintaining
Speaker 1: a lawn was a lot of work, Not that the
Speaker 1: hoity toity types were the ones doing the work, mind you,
Speaker 1: but they were the ones who could afford livestock or
Speaker 1: laborers who would trend back stuff for them. So from
Speaker 1: manor houses to inhabited castles you had the practice of
Speaker 1: maintaining these large grassy areas. Now, some of that sensibility
Speaker 1: would also find its way over to the New World
Speaker 1: where it really took hold. Now, the grasses in the
Speaker 1: New World were different than those found in Europe. But
Speaker 1: when settlers came to North America, they brought with them livestock,
Speaker 1: and apparently the livestock really liked the grass in America
Speaker 1: so much so that they ding dang durnate at all.
Speaker 1: So to keep the livestock from starving, the colonists were
Speaker 1: importing grass seeds from Europe and North Africa, including grasses that,
Speaker 1: if you were to go by their names, sound like
Speaker 1: they come from America. Kentucky blue Grass. I'm looking at you.
Speaker 1: You ain't from Kentucky. Thomas Jefferson was said to have
Speaker 1: taken up the goal of creating a manicured lawn at
Speaker 1: Monticello after he visited France, and George Washington had a
Speaker 1: similar desire to turn his a state of Mount Vernon
Speaker 1: into a mirror of European standards. And certainly the idea
Speaker 1: of a well kept lawn managed to really take hold
Speaker 1: in America, becoming something of an obsession really, which will
Speaker 1: cover a little bit later in this episode, and certain
Speaker 1: sports definitely helped things along, for which we can largely
Speaker 1: thank the Scots. Scottish sports like golf and lawn bowling
Speaker 1: were brought over by Scottish immigrants to America and they
Speaker 1: became popular past signs for those who had the leisure
Speaker 1: to pursue such things. But to play lawn games, you
Speaker 1: gotta cut the grass, otherwise you're going to spend more
Speaker 1: time trying to find the game equipment than you get
Speaker 1: to play with the darned things. Now we're gonna come
Speaker 1: back to the evolution of the lawn, particularly in America,
Speaker 1: and just a little bit as that history ties into
Speaker 1: a lot of other interesting stuff and includes some heavy
Speaker 1: duty connections to other elements of American society, in addition
Speaker 1: to feeding an entire industry dedicated to lawn care and maintenance.
Speaker 1: But let's get back to our early history of lawn mowers. Okay,
Speaker 1: So by the nineteenth century, lawns were the rage in England, France,
Speaker 1: and starting to be in America. But as I said,
Speaker 1: unless you had livestock or the cash to pay laborers,
Speaker 1: you probably couldn't maintain a lawn on your own. You
Speaker 1: certainly couldn't do so to the immaculate standards of the aristocracy.
Speaker 1: The wealthy would spend a lot to get that perfect lawn,
Speaker 1: even going so far as to hire people to use
Speaker 1: handheld shears to cut grass down quite low and to
Speaker 1: avoid the patterns that you would see if you used scythes,
Speaker 1: because cutting grass and those arc swings would leave behind
Speaker 1: patterns in the grass, and that was considered aesthetically unpleasing.
Speaker 1: And then we come to an Englishman named Edwin Beard
Speaker 1: Budding born in Stroud, Gloucestershire. In Budding started off with
Speaker 1: some strikes against him. His parents were unmarried, his father
Speaker 1: a farmer, and in England, that put him at a
Speaker 1: fairly low social standing. Class in England was a very
Speaker 1: important concept still can be while over there on the
Speaker 1: whole working class versus posh and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: So he started off in carpentry, but he switched over
Speaker 1: to working at iron foundries. The Industrial Revolution was well
Speaker 1: underway in England at this point and the demand for
Speaker 1: iron tools and machinery was very high, and through experience
Speaker 1: Budding built up an understanding of engineering and problem solving.
Speaker 1: He would end up inventing several things or making his
Speaker 1: own version of some existing machines, but obviously the one
Speaker 1: we want to really look at is the lawnmower. Budding
Speaker 1: got the idea for the lawnmower when he saw a
Speaker 1: device used by textile mills to trim back the fibers
Speaker 1: that stick out from the surface of cloth, also known
Speaker 1: as the nap of a cloth, and with some textiles
Speaker 1: the goal is to fluff the nap out, use little
Speaker 1: homes or prickly flowers, even to pull some of those
Speaker 1: threads out, and then you comb it a certain way,
Speaker 1: which can make the cloth softer to the touch and
Speaker 1: better at doing stuff like trapping heat. But sometimes you
Speaker 1: just wanted a very smooth piece of cloth, something that
Speaker 1: wouldn't get caught easily on rough surfaces. So, for example,
Speaker 1: you might want a carpet that could withstand more use
Speaker 1: as long as it didn't you know, catch on shoes
Speaker 1: and stuff. So you would want to shear the nap.
Speaker 1: You'd want to cut that nap close to the cloth.
Speaker 1: And in earlier days this job was done by skilled
Speaker 1: tradespeople who would use giant sets of shears. I mean
Speaker 1: these things were massive in order to cut the nap
Speaker 1: off the surface of the cloths as efficiently as possible.
Speaker 1: But by buttons time, some genius whose name is lost
Speaker 1: to history came up with the notion of building a
Speaker 1: mechanical device that has blades arranged around a drum or
Speaker 1: cylinder in a type of helix shape. The drum or
Speaker 1: cylinder rotates, and by running the surface of the cloth
Speaker 1: near this helix of blades, the blades could trim back
Speaker 1: the nap on the surface of the cloth. Add in
Speaker 1: some rollers and some other elements to pull the cloth along,
Speaker 1: and you get yourself a machine that can trim the
Speaker 1: nap back on cloth evenly, consistently, and efficiently. Ah Ha
Speaker 1: said Budding, what if I took that same basic idea
Speaker 1: and flipped it around a bit, so you could trim
Speaker 1: back grass with rotating blades along a cylinder. And in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty that's just what he did, securing a patent
Speaker 1: number six zero eight one in fact for his invention.
Speaker 1: I'll explain more about it after this quick break. Budding
Speaker 1: saw an opportunity to create a device that could consistently
Speaker 1: and reliably cut grass a specific lengths, so, in other words,
Speaker 1: you could adjust how tall the ass would be and
Speaker 1: without leaving those marks behind that you would get if
Speaker 1: you were to cut grass with scythes and such. Also,
Speaker 1: the lawnmower wouldn't poop on the lawn, unlike livestock. It
Speaker 1: would be particularly handy for parks and sporting grounds where
Speaker 1: the well to do could gather for their leisure time
Speaker 1: and look for something, you know, orderly and neat, which
Speaker 1: very much fit in with the sensibilities of the elite
Speaker 1: of nineteenth century Britain. So Edwin Beard Butting built a
Speaker 1: wheeled machine out of rought and cast iron, had a
Speaker 1: pair of wheels. It also had a pair of rollers
Speaker 1: and a forward roller and a back roller. Uh as
Speaker 1: well as the blade mounted cylinder that did the actual cutting.
Speaker 1: So imagine you've got a mechanical device has a small
Speaker 1: roller in the front. This is the thing that can
Speaker 1: be adjusted so you can control how close to the
Speaker 1: ground you're cutting the grass. Behind that roller, you've got
Speaker 1: your horizontal cylinder that's got the curved blades arranged in
Speaker 1: a helix around that rotatble cylinder, so it rotates along
Speaker 1: the horizontal axis, is what I'm saying. To either side
Speaker 1: of that are the wheels of the lawnmower that provides stability,
Speaker 1: allows you to actually aim it and push it along
Speaker 1: the ground. And then in the rear you have a
Speaker 1: big roller. It kind of looks like a more narrow
Speaker 1: and slightly smaller version of a steam roller, if that
Speaker 1: helps you imagine this. Buttons design also incorporated a tray
Speaker 1: to catch grass clippings. The tray was in the front
Speaker 1: because the way this machine worked, it would propel the
Speaker 1: clippings out, shooting them out towards the front of the machine.
Speaker 1: That way, you wouldn't have to follow behind the lawnmower
Speaker 1: with a rake or something like that to to rake
Speaker 1: up the clippings. And it was that rear roller, the
Speaker 1: big steam roller type thing in the back that connected
Speaker 1: to the bladed cylinder through a gear drive. That's where
Speaker 1: you've got a series of gears that fit together to
Speaker 1: transfer the rotational motion of the roller that's pressed against
Speaker 1: the ground. So as you push the lawnmower forward, the
Speaker 1: roller rolls because it's making contact with the ground, and
Speaker 1: it transfers that rotational motion to the cylinder or the
Speaker 1: drama if you prefer, that's got the blades on it.
Speaker 1: And all of this was made out of iron. Now
Speaker 1: this meant the person who was pushing the mower had
Speaker 1: to use a pretty good amount of force because you
Speaker 1: weren't just pushing hard enough to move the mower itself,
Speaker 1: which being made out of iron, was pretty darn heavy,
Speaker 1: but also to power that drive train of gears that
Speaker 1: would you know, transmit the rotation to the cylinder. And
Speaker 1: each step of that process, each gear connection, means that
Speaker 1: you're losing a little bit of the amount of energy
Speaker 1: you're giving to the system to stuff like friction, So
Speaker 1: that means you have to push even harder to get
Speaker 1: things going. But still Budding showed that the same general
Speaker 1: principle that worked for cutting back the nap on cloth
Speaker 1: could in fact be used to cut grass. He patented
Speaker 1: his design in eighteen thirty, and in that patent Budding
Speaker 1: said his invention represented quote a new combination and application
Speaker 1: of machinery for the purpose of cropping or sharing the
Speaker 1: vegetable surfaces of lawns, grass plats and pleasure grounds. Country
Speaker 1: gentlemen may find and using my machine themselves, and amusing
Speaker 1: useful and healthy exercise end quote. It's interesting to note
Speaker 1: that a lot of the basic designs introduced by Budding
Speaker 1: would stick around throughout the ages with mechanical push mowers,
Speaker 1: and the ones that we have today have at least
Speaker 1: some resemblance to the one that Budding was making back
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteenth century. Now they the new ones
Speaker 1: are are more elegant in design, and they're made of
Speaker 1: much lighter materials, but the general principle behind the operation
Speaker 1: remains pretty much the same. Budding formed a partnership with
Speaker 1: an engineer named John Ferraby, who owned a company called
Speaker 1: Phoenix Iron Works. Fairby had the manufacturing rights to produce
Speaker 1: Buddings design and fronted the costs to develop the prototype
Speaker 1: and one of the earliest lawnmowers that the pair produced
Speaker 1: went to the London Zoo, and another one became the
Speaker 1: property of Oxford University. By eighteen thirty two, word had
Speaker 1: already spread that Buddings machine could create great results, and
Speaker 1: demand was soon outpacing Farraby's capacity to produce lawnmowers, and
Speaker 1: Farraby then began to license the design to other engineers,
Speaker 1: to other iron works owners, including Ransoms of Ipswitch, a
Speaker 1: company that was already in the business of producing plows
Speaker 1: for farmers. They advertised the new lawnmower invention saying, quote
Speaker 1: the machine is so easy to manage, the persons unpracticed
Speaker 1: in the art of mowing may cut the grass on
Speaker 1: lawns and bowling greens with ease end quote. In other words,
Speaker 1: they were kind of positioning this as something of a
Speaker 1: leisure activity for uh, for the upper class. That you know,
Speaker 1: mowing the lawn with a side that was a low
Speaker 1: class thing to do. That was for laborers. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: see people of the upper classes do that. It was
Speaker 1: beneath their station. But mowing with this exotic machine that
Speaker 1: was something befitting a person of high station. And it was,
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, pretty simple to operate these
Speaker 1: things you just grabbed the handle of the mower and
Speaker 1: you pushed it forward, kind of like a cart. You
Speaker 1: would exert a little bit of a downward push as
Speaker 1: you did. So it took far less skilled and scything did.
Speaker 1: And by framing the activity of mowing a lawn as
Speaker 1: a means of taking exercise and being out in nature,
Speaker 1: the companies were slowly shift the perception of caring for
Speaker 1: a lawn in general. And this would also help later
Speaker 1: on as the lawnmower would be marketed towards the middle class,
Speaker 1: when the prices would eventually come down. Now, when I
Speaker 1: say the demand was outstripping supply, we have to remember
Speaker 1: that manufacturing in the eighteen thirties wasn't nearly as efficient
Speaker 1: as it would be a century later. So I don't
Speaker 1: want to give you the impression that the lawnmower became
Speaker 1: the must have Christmas gift of eighteen thirty two or something.
Speaker 1: When Budding passed away in eighteen forty six because of
Speaker 1: a stroke, the lawnmower was a successful invention, but it
Speaker 1: was not yet a household item, so it wasn't like
Speaker 1: Budding had become a millionaire. In fact, he died before
Speaker 1: really seeing his invention get adopted around England, France, and America.
Speaker 1: By the eighteen sixties, Farrabees Iron Works had produced around
Speaker 1: five thousand lawnmowers and then included a small range of
Speaker 1: designs which mainly had to do with the width of
Speaker 1: the lawnmower. A wider lawnmower can obviously cut a wider
Speaker 1: strip of grass, which means you don't have to do
Speaker 1: as many passes on a lawn or a field in
Speaker 1: order to complete a job, but it also means that
Speaker 1: the lawnmower gets heavier. Some of the designs incorporated a
Speaker 1: second handle on the lawnmower. This one would be toward
Speaker 1: the front of the machine, which meant you could actually
Speaker 1: pull it along behind you instead of pushing it in
Speaker 1: front of you. One design I saw had the handle
Speaker 1: on a hinge, so you could swing the handle so
Speaker 1: you could swing it towards the rear of the machine
Speaker 1: and make it a push mower, or you could swing
Speaker 1: it to the front of the machine and make it
Speaker 1: a pull mower. Buddings design inspired others to make their
Speaker 1: own adjustments. In eighteen forty two, Alexander Shanks, an inventor
Speaker 1: from Scotland, made a version of the lawnmower that could
Speaker 1: be hitched to a horse or or pony, which allowed
Speaker 1: him to make even larger lawnmowers that would be far
Speaker 1: too heavy for a person to push or pull on
Speaker 1: their own to prevent the horses from damaging the grass.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you were cutting the grass on a
Speaker 1: golf course, something that was very common in Scotland or
Speaker 1: tennis courts. Well, they would put little leather shoes on
Speaker 1: the horse's hoofs, so the horse would be wearing booties
Speaker 1: in order to mow the lawn. In the eighteen fifties,
Speaker 1: inventor Thomas Green made some adjustments of his own to
Speaker 1: the lawnmower design, and one simple tweak was that he
Speaker 1: added a rake to help lift grass blades up a
Speaker 1: little bit for cutting, so that way you didn't end
Speaker 1: up with any mist bits. But in the late eighteen
Speaker 1: fifties he made a much more substantial change. He created
Speaker 1: a chain drive for the mower's blades instead of the
Speaker 1: gear drive that Budding had created, and by removing the
Speaker 1: need for so many cast iron gears and replacing them
Speaker 1: with a chain, he made the lawnmowers design simpler and
Speaker 1: importantly lighter. It was also apparently less noisy, as Green
Speaker 1: called his lawnmower the Silen's Messoar for silent running. By
Speaker 1: this time, thirty years after the invention of the lawnmower,
Speaker 1: word had reached America, and in eighteen sixty eight an
Speaker 1: inventor from Connecticut named Amariah Hills received a patent for
Speaker 1: improvements to Budding's lawnmower design, which included changing out a
Speaker 1: cylinder covered in blades to an open spiral cutter. So
Speaker 1: just imagine a helix of blades, but you no longer
Speaker 1: have the mounted on a cylinder. It's almost like it's
Speaker 1: just two blades, and that mount two wheels on either
Speaker 1: side that can turn. Uh. He also allowed more fine
Speaker 1: tuning for the cutting height and changed how the handle
Speaker 1: attached to the frame of the mower, and his design
Speaker 1: would go on to become a very popular mower in
Speaker 1: the Northeastern United States, sometimes called an archimedian mower because
Speaker 1: the blades resembled the classic archimedian screw. Many of these
Speaker 1: machines saw use in parks and for maintaining stuff like
Speaker 1: golf courses and tennis courts and the like, but over
Speaker 1: in America, they would also be sought after because of
Speaker 1: a few other big factors, and one is the growth
Speaker 1: of the suburbs. So, after the Civil War in America,
Speaker 1: and as the US was having its own boom in industry,
Speaker 1: cities were becoming more industrialized in general, and many people,
Speaker 1: at least many wealthy people, the people who could afford it,
Speaker 1: moved out of the cities and settled in surrounding areas
Speaker 1: near the cities, forming the suburbs. And like the French
Speaker 1: and English aristocracy a century earlier, many of them saw
Speaker 1: a well maintained lawn as something of a status symbol.
Speaker 1: So there was a general movement toward cutting lawns, which
Speaker 1: must have pleased a Mariah Hill as it represented a
Speaker 1: demand for those archimedian mowers. And in eight teen seventy
Speaker 1: Frank J. Scott's The Art of Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds
Speaker 1: of small Extent hit the presses. This book, which is
Speaker 1: six d eighteen pages in length if we don't include
Speaker 1: all the advertisements. At the end of the book, it
Speaker 1: goes to what I can only describe as excruciating detail
Speaker 1: regarding how to make your lawn look absolutely magnificent, and
Speaker 1: further you are a monster if you don't do it.
Speaker 1: You can read the whole thing over on the Smithsonian
Speaker 1: Libraries website if you would like. If you want to
Speaker 1: skip to the juicy stuff, go to page one hundred seven,
Speaker 1: chapter thirteen, The lawn. The chapter opens up with a
Speaker 1: couple of references to poetry, followed by this passage quote,
Speaker 1: A smooth, closely shaven surface of grass is by far
Speaker 1: the most essential element of beauty on the grounds of
Speaker 1: a suburban home. End quote boom, mic drop. You don't
Speaker 1: mow your grass. You are in a front to beauty.
Speaker 1: Now I'm being a little, you know, facetious here, but
Speaker 1: Scott was arguing that in an age in which companies
Speaker 1: were laying down train tracks or street car lines, more
Speaker 1: people from far and wide, we're passing through different neighborhoods
Speaker 1: and then judging those neighborhoods based on their aesthetic beauty
Speaker 1: or lack thereof. And isn't it more American to be
Speaker 1: proud of your community and to show it off with distinction.
Speaker 1: So rich suburbanites eight that stuff up, man, and so
Speaker 1: lawn care started to be a big business. It was
Speaker 1: boosted more with related inventions such as Joseph Lessler's lawn sprinkler,
Speaker 1: which could attach to a garden hose. Lawns need a
Speaker 1: good deal of water to remain healthy. That's What'll kind
Speaker 1: of touch on that again in a bit. And this
Speaker 1: was a way where you could water your lawn without
Speaker 1: having to do a lot of backbreaking work in the process.
Speaker 1: And again, the concept of lawn care being connected to
Speaker 1: exercise and being out of doors was a big part
Speaker 1: of all this too. So while America's obsession with lawn
Speaker 1: care began to take root, so to speak, we had
Speaker 1: other stuff going on at the same time. Sometime around
Speaker 1: or so, inventors began to incorporate the next logical element
Speaker 1: for lawnmowers steam engines. Yes, steam powered lawnmowers were a
Speaker 1: thing briefly, and why not. Steam engines had already been
Speaker 1: used for trains for decades, so why not strap a
Speaker 1: big old boiler to a mechanical lawnmower and make the
Speaker 1: boiling water do all the work. So here's how these
Speaker 1: things worked. In general. You had your boiler, which is
Speaker 1: the name suggests, is the container holding the water that
Speaker 1: gets boiled off to produce steam. The boiler is pressurized,
Speaker 1: so the steam can't just escape, has to go through
Speaker 1: a specific route, and typically you would have a valve
Speaker 1: that would allow steam to pass through under really incredible pressure.
Speaker 1: So a furnace heats the boiler up, the water starts
Speaker 1: to boil off, and the steam builds up and passes
Speaker 1: through valves to a cylinder that has a piston in it.
Speaker 1: The steam forces the piston down the length of the
Speaker 1: cylinder until the piston passes an exhaust valve, whereupon the
Speaker 1: steam escapes the cylinder, the piston returns to its starting position,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing can happen again. Attaching mechanical elements
Speaker 1: to the piston via a piston rod allows you to
Speaker 1: transfer that mechanical motion to other components, such as the
Speaker 1: wheels and the cutting blades of a lawnmower, and bang,
Speaker 1: now you don't have to push it yourself or hitch
Speaker 1: it to a horse or something. You just gotta fill
Speaker 1: up the boiler from time to time. You gotta keep
Speaker 1: that furnace going and keep it really hot, and you know,
Speaker 1: you just gotta not explode, which is something that can
Speaker 1: happen if pressure builds up in a boiler and the
Speaker 1: steam has nowhere to go. But hey, a boiler explosion
Speaker 1: is a small price to pay for a well manicured lawn. Right. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm clearly getting snarky again, but these lawnmowers did work,
Speaker 1: and I've seen some that look like the results you
Speaker 1: would get if you crossed a locomotive with a mechanical
Speaker 1: push mower along with a riding lawnmower. You would sit
Speaker 1: in front of the boiler, which would be mounted at
Speaker 1: the rear of the lawnmower, and you would use controls
Speaker 1: to steer yourself as you rode along and moved down
Speaker 1: a lawn or field, and the steam engine provides all
Speaker 1: the tow, the wheels, and the blades. It's neat, if
Speaker 1: a little intimidating. These things were huge, and they had
Speaker 1: to be because if you're using steam, you need to
Speaker 1: have a big boiler to hold enough water so that
Speaker 1: you've got the the omph for your your engine. These
Speaker 1: clearly were not intended for the average homeowner, or even
Speaker 1: the upper middle class or lower upper class homeowners. These
Speaker 1: were more for you know, larger, more regularly level areas.
Speaker 1: They didn't do well if there were hills or anything
Speaker 1: like that, so these were more frequently used for something
Speaker 1: like a a flat landscaped park, or you know, a
Speaker 1: sporting area like a golf course or maybe a tennis court.
Speaker 1: They also didn't stick around for very long. And when
Speaker 1: we come back, I'll talk about the development of the
Speaker 1: gas powered lawnmower, which would take the steam of its
Speaker 1: predecessor for a couple of good reasons. But first let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break. Before I get into more modern mowers,
Speaker 1: I should mention another inventor, this one named John Albert Burr.
Speaker 1: He made change us to the classic cylindrical lawnmower design
Speaker 1: so that the gears wouldn't easily get gummed up with
Speaker 1: lawn clippings. Essentially, they figured out, hey, if we cover
Speaker 1: these gears up so that the lawn clippings can't get
Speaker 1: in the gearworks, then you're not going to have as
Speaker 1: many jams as you try and mow your lawn. He
Speaker 1: also created a mower that would allow landscapers to mow
Speaker 1: more closely to the edge of walls and buildings to
Speaker 1: get a neater cut. Also around this time, improvements in
Speaker 1: manufacturing meant that companies could mass produce lawnmowers, which also
Speaker 1: meant the costs of production dropped, and that meant companies
Speaker 1: could drop the prices of those machines, and that meant
Speaker 1: more people were able to afford lawnmowers, and in American particular,
Speaker 1: that meant booming business. As the idea that a well
Speaker 1: kept lawn was an important component of being seen as
Speaker 1: an upstanding member of society it had really taken hold here.
Speaker 1: So this combination of elements led to a lot more
Speaker 1: people buying lawnmowers. And when I say that, remember I'm
Speaker 1: still talking about the mechanical push mower style devices. Well,
Speaker 1: the steam powered lawnmowers appeared on the scene in the
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties, but by nineteen o two, Ransoms then I
Speaker 1: mentioned much earlier in this episode as one of the
Speaker 1: first to license Budding's lawnmower design for production. Well, they
Speaker 1: created the first lawnmower that used an internal combustion engine
Speaker 1: for power. This was a ride on mower, and it
Speaker 1: was a big one. So this was not a push mower.
Speaker 1: This this was a gigantic monstrosity. In fact, the images
Speaker 1: I've seen of this thing make it look like there's
Speaker 1: a gentleman in a jacket and tweed hat who is
Speaker 1: taking a printing press out for a ride or something.
Speaker 1: It's a machine with big, heavy chains, enormous rollers, a
Speaker 1: large container in front to catch clippings, and whirling blades
Speaker 1: of destruction underneath. It looks pretty awesome, I think, and
Speaker 1: almost unreal. It certainly isn't what I think of when
Speaker 1: someone says lawn mower to me. The internal combustion engine
Speaker 1: was the death knell for steam powered lawnmowers. While Ransom's
Speaker 1: ride on mower was huge, the switch to an internal
Speaker 1: combustion engine would lead to smaller lawnmower designs, and you
Speaker 1: didn't need an enormous boiler like you would with a
Speaker 1: steam powered one. Nor did you have to stoke some
Speaker 1: sort of furnace to keep things going. You just needed
Speaker 1: some petrol in the fuel tank. Now, I've talked about
Speaker 1: how internal combustion engines work in other episodes, so I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go into all that detail here, but
Speaker 1: i will say that the early versions of the motor
Speaker 1: powered lawn mowers, really in other forms, seemed to be
Speaker 1: based on that cylindrical helix design along the horizontal axis,
Speaker 1: the same sort of design that Budding had proposed way
Speaker 1: back in eighteen thirty. So these were not the rotary
Speaker 1: mowers that we would see much later, not yet, but
Speaker 1: the advances in internal combustion engines, which would both make
Speaker 1: the mowers get smaller and more powerful. As various engineers
Speaker 1: made improvements to the engines that eventually did lead to
Speaker 1: the design of a different kind of lawnmowers. So instead
Speaker 1: of that horizontal axis cylinder coal approach in which the
Speaker 1: blades would rotate around that horizontal access the internal combustion
Speaker 1: in Gentel out for a lawnmower with a vertical axle
Speaker 1: upon which you would fix a horizontal blade, So the
Speaker 1: rotating vertical axle would rotate this horizontal blade close to
Speaker 1: the ground in a really fast circle, and you've got
Speaker 1: your rotary lawnmower. A lot of different engineers and companies
Speaker 1: experimented with creating rotary lawnmowers for a few decades actually,
Speaker 1: but most of them weren't really that successful because the
Speaker 1: engines being used just weren't up to turning something that
Speaker 1: way in an efficient manner, so you couldn't cut very
Speaker 1: well with them. But by the nineteen fifties it had
Speaker 1: become a viable approach to lawnmower design, and now we're
Speaker 1: going to get into some interesting and some upsetting parts
Speaker 1: of history. Okay, So we laid out how the aristocracy
Speaker 1: used lawns as a way to show off their wealth
Speaker 1: and their sensibilities, and we out about how those ideas
Speaker 1: filtered from France and England to America and how Frank
Speaker 1: Scott promoted them with his authoritative approach on appealing to
Speaker 1: wealthy suburban families. So let's talk about some big issues
Speaker 1: in the United States that made lawns a sort of
Speaker 1: symbol of the hals versus the have nots. And this
Speaker 1: is also going to have a lot to do about
Speaker 1: racial discrimination. Back in eighteen seventy when Scott's book hit
Speaker 1: the scene, his target demographic was the white suburban homeowner.
Speaker 1: The suburbs were where you typically find the upper middle
Speaker 1: class or maybe the lower upper classes, and these communities
Speaker 1: were predominantly white, and frequently that was actually a selling
Speaker 1: point that real estate agents would market to potential clients.
Speaker 1: It was, without a doubt a racist perspective, the idea
Speaker 1: that the community is preferable because there are no people
Speaker 1: of color living there. That's just gross, all right. So
Speaker 1: flash four to the nineteen forties, the United States enters
Speaker 1: World War two and sends more than sixteen million Americans
Speaker 1: to serve. During the war, more than four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: of those Americans died in action and another six hundred
Speaker 1: seventy thousand were wounded. At the time, racial segregation was
Speaker 1: still very much in practice even in the military, and
Speaker 1: the number of black people serving in the US military
Speaker 1: actually represented a lower percentage than the demographics of black
Speaker 1: people relatives to the general US population at the time,
Speaker 1: but there were still thousands of black soldiers and volunteers
Speaker 1: who were active in the theater of war, including soldiers
Speaker 1: on the front lines. Back home, the United States government
Speaker 1: passed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of nineteen forty four, better
Speaker 1: known as the g I Bill. The purpose of the
Speaker 1: bill was to create a support system for soldiers returning
Speaker 1: home that included important infrastructure like the construction of hospitals,
Speaker 1: but it also included the chance to go to college
Speaker 1: tuition free up to five dollars, which, hey, how about
Speaker 1: those college tuition increases, y'all. They could also secure low
Speaker 1: interest mortgage offers on homes through banks because the government
Speaker 1: was backing those loans. So these soldiers, some of whom
Speaker 1: had been overseas for years were to be given some
Speaker 1: assistance upon returning home to make up for the fact
Speaker 1: that they had to leave their lives, their loved ones,
Speaker 1: and their livelihoods all behind. And that bill meant that
Speaker 1: millions of returning soldiers would be able to buy a
Speaker 1: home for the first time in the suburbs and follow
Speaker 1: the American dream of a white picket fence and a
Speaker 1: well manicured lawn. That is, they could do it if
Speaker 1: they were white. While the bill ostensibly offered benefits to
Speaker 1: all returning veterans, regardless of race or gender, in practice
Speaker 1: it was far more common to see those benefits go
Speaker 1: to white male veterans, and black veterans also frequently found
Speaker 1: it really hard to secure a loan from a bank
Speaker 1: for a mortgage, even with the guaranteed government backing that
Speaker 1: came from the g I Bill, And so the suburban
Speaker 1: home and along with it, the American lawn became sort
Speaker 1: of an extended marker for segregation and racial discrimination. Now
Speaker 1: did this mean that all white people who enjoyed maintaining
Speaker 1: their lawn were racist for doing so, No, of course not.
Speaker 1: Rather they were privileged and that they had more opportunities
Speaker 1: to secure a home in the suburbs and a lawn
Speaker 1: to maintain than people of color had. And that's also
Speaker 1: to point out that there were black people moving into
Speaker 1: suburbs and having lawns, but from a systematic point of view,
Speaker 1: they were doing so by overcoming obstacles that their white
Speaker 1: neighbors just didn't necessarily face. The post World War two
Speaker 1: era saw an economic boom, and along with developments like
Speaker 1: color printing, radio, television, we also saw a boom in advertising.
Speaker 1: And you better believe companies that were making lawn care
Speaker 1: products and machinery, including lawnmowers, were leaning heavily on promoting
Speaker 1: the idea that a neat, orderly lawn reflects well on
Speaker 1: homeowners and that the products they were selling would help
Speaker 1: you achieve that dream of homogeneous perfection that plays a
Speaker 1: pardon it too. The US in the nineteen fifties was
Speaker 1: an era of conformity. There was an intense pressure to
Speaker 1: create the ideal of perfection. Honestly, when we look at
Speaker 1: stuff like how people will manufacture these perfect photos for
Speaker 1: their social media platforms like their Instagram, to me, it
Speaker 1: feels like it's that same mentality coming back into play.
Speaker 1: Sure your life might be a shambles, but dang it,
Speaker 1: your lawn looks nice and so to the outside world,
Speaker 1: you're just fine. Now, maybe I'm getting a bit too
Speaker 1: off target here. Let's get back to lawnmowers. So by
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties we started seeing the rotary style lawnmowers
Speaker 1: that ran on gas hitting the market. This is where
Speaker 1: we get that iconic starter chord, the pull chord that
Speaker 1: can foil us as we try to get that little
Speaker 1: bit of fuel that's been pumped into the engine to
Speaker 1: catch on before giving that that cord a big rip
Speaker 1: or three to try and get the engine to start.
Speaker 1: And I don't think I've ever talked about how a
Speaker 1: poll start or rope start engine works. So let's just
Speaker 1: cover that super quickly, shall we. All Right, So inside
Speaker 1: the lawnmower, you've got a reel and you've got a
Speaker 1: chord wound around that reel. The end of that chord
Speaker 1: is attached to a handle that's on the outside the lawnmower.
Speaker 1: That's the part that you grip and pull. Attached to
Speaker 1: the real inside the lawnmower is a spring. So pulling
Speaker 1: the cord will cause the spring to extend and it
Speaker 1: wants to contract, so that's the force you're feeling. The
Speaker 1: tension you feel is the spring trying to contract again.
Speaker 1: So when you let go of the cord, it goes
Speaker 1: back into the you know, the lawnmower because that spring
Speaker 1: is compressing well. Also attached to the real is the
Speaker 1: clutch of the engine, and as the real turns, it
Speaker 1: transmits rotational energy to the crank shaft. If the crank
Speaker 1: shaft turns quickly enough, a pair of magnets connected to
Speaker 1: a flywheel begin to move outward due to centrifugal force,
Speaker 1: and once they extend far enough, the magnets affect the
Speaker 1: ignition module so that it generates a spark and that
Speaker 1: sets off the combustion in the engines cylinders, and once
Speaker 1: that gets going, the engine can take over. From there,
Speaker 1: it can continue that cycle of sparking the spark plugs,
Speaker 1: assuming that there's fuel left in the tank to ignite
Speaker 1: due to those sparks. So a gas powered rotary lawnmower
Speaker 1: typically uses the engine to pro vide power to the blade,
Speaker 1: of course, but also frequently to at least two wheels
Speaker 1: to make it a little easier to push around. They
Speaker 1: require less physical effort to use than the mechanical lawnmowers
Speaker 1: that have been around for more than a century. But
Speaker 1: they also require fuel, and they also give off emissions
Speaker 1: through the burning of that fuel. Now, some folks have
Speaker 1: been calling out lawns more recently for lots of different reasons,
Speaker 1: including environmental and socioeconomic concerns. A lot of water is
Speaker 1: used on lawns, which often can be seen as as
Speaker 1: very wasteful. And there's always stories about communities that have
Speaker 1: water restrictions due to drought, and some jerk faces using
Speaker 1: precious water to water their lawn because for some reason
Speaker 1: that's more important than everyone else having access to water. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some folks use stuff like herbicides and pesticides in order
Speaker 1: to maintain their lawns, which can sometimes cause chemical runoff
Speaker 1: that can get washed out and join the water cycle.
Speaker 1: That's bad news. And of course there's the fact that
Speaker 1: lawns are not natural ecosystems. They represent a less biologically
Speaker 1: useful surface. And then the fact that the very concept
Speaker 1: of lawns dates back to this aristocratic notion of showing
Speaker 1: off your wealth. So might we one day see a
Speaker 1: world in which the manicured lawn is really an oddity
Speaker 1: and people move to maybe a more natural and thus
Speaker 1: disorderly approach. I don't know, but I sure hope so,
Speaker 1: because then my h o A won't be on my
Speaker 1: case if I don't get to the grass cutting on time.
Speaker 1: I hope you liked that episode from last year. I
Speaker 1: will have new episodes out for you soon. I am
Speaker 1: you know. The home emergency thing, while not resolved, is
Speaker 1: at a point where I no longer can do anything
Speaker 1: about it, so it's out of my hands. So we'll
Speaker 1: be getting right back into writing and recording new episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. Hope you had a happy New Year,
Speaker 1: a safe holiday, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: M tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.