Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech 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'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and the Love all Things Tech, And while I've been
Speaker 1: recording shows from my home for nearly a year now,
Speaker 1: I still occasionally get reminded about how things can be
Speaker 1: different from when I was working in the office. For
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 the townhouse I live in. They always seem
Speaker 1: to show up just as I'm getting ready to record.
Speaker 1: And then I thought, hey, how about I talk about
Speaker 1: the history of lawnmowers and how they work. That could
Speaker 1: be a great topic and turn that frustration I feel
Speaker 1: into an episode. So let's begin with some etymology, which
Speaker 1: I 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
Speaker 1: woods like a glade. Thanks Miriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Now
Speaker 1: y'all might know back in my college days, I studied
Speaker 1: medieval literature, including Old and Middle English nexts and so
Speaker 1: immediately I thought of our old pal Jeffrey Chaucer, known
Speaker 1: for composing the Canterbury Tales, though then he thoughtlessly went
Speaker 1: off and died before he finished writing them. But he
Speaker 1: also wrote a poem called Parliament of Fouls that mentions
Speaker 1: a Lawnda, which, hey, that poem also references Valentine's Day
Speaker 1: later on, and since we just had Valentine's Day, this
Speaker 1: episode is now timely. So the whole poem is far
Speaker 1: too long for me to read. It's like seven lines long,
Speaker 1: but I will give you the little bit of it
Speaker 1: that's about the LAWNDA. And the passage goes like this,
Speaker 1: and then a lawanda upon the Hilla of Flores was set.
Speaker 1: This noble 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: it am he's come to call. But you can't really
Speaker 1: be on the lookout for the next bully if you
Speaker 1: can't see the armies for the trees, right, and so
Speaker 1: it gets to chopping. You chop, chop, chop all those
Speaker 1: trees down around your fortifications so that you can see
Speaker 1: folks from a long way off if they're approaching, and
Speaker 1: you can prepare if there's an imminent attack. It also
Speaker 1: helps if you know you don't leave trees around for
Speaker 1: people to cut down and turn into stuff like battering ramps,
Speaker 1: So 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
Speaker 1: exactly you know, pristine, So to maintain the lawns, you'd
Speaker 1: either have livestock go out to the fields to graze,
Speaker 1: thus cutting back the grass by eating it, as well
Speaker 1: as 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 side 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 one direction. The blade is
Speaker 1: is sharpened on the inside curve, not the outside curve,
Speaker 1: and you're typically going right 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 scythe 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 after were to gather up all
Speaker 1: the trimmings. Were usually looking at fields that have, you know,
Speaker 1: grass that's quite high, like maybe a foot high or
Speaker 1: maybe taller, so you need to have something to to
Speaker 1: rake up all the clippings that you've left behind. I've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of videos of folks using sides in
Speaker 1: order to cut back on, you know, relying on fossil
Speaker 1: fuels and to make use of the trimmings in various ways,
Speaker 1: from compost to making hay while the sun shines. In
Speaker 1: some videos, I've seen folks use scythes more effectively than
Speaker 1: someone who is using a mechanical push mower or a
Speaker 1: weed whacker, though power mowers do tend to be more
Speaker 1: efficient than a scythe. So a push mower, like a
Speaker 1: mechanical one where there's no motor, it's just from human
Speaker 1: power that versus a scythe, you might actually see someone
Speaker 1: be more effective with the side than with the push mower.
Speaker 1: Weed whackers same thing, uh, the push mower that has
Speaker 1: a motor are on it. Those tend to win out
Speaker 1: in the end, so it really does start to make
Speaker 1: you wonder, however, why the heck did anyone think to
Speaker 1: invent the mechanical lawnmower in the first place. If a
Speaker 1: scythe can be as efficient, why would anyone ever think
Speaker 1: about making a mechanical invention that does effectively the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing. The first lawnmowers were purely mechanical, relying
Speaker 1: on gears and blades that were mounted on a drum
Speaker 1: like cylinder. And if those aren't more efficient than a scythe,
Speaker 1: why would 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 them throughout Europe,
Speaker 1: particularly in France and England, the strategic usefulness of castle's
Speaker 1: gradually declined 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 liked 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: mannor houses to abbittant 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 estate of Mountain Vernon into
Speaker 1: a mirror of European standards. And certainly the d of
Speaker 1: a well kept lawn managed to really take hold in America,
Speaker 1: becoming something of an obsession really, which will cover a
Speaker 1: little bit later in this episode, and certain sports definitely
Speaker 1: helped things along, for which we can largely thank the Scots.
Speaker 1: Scottish sports like golf and lawn bowling were brought over
Speaker 1: by Scottish immigrants to America and they became popular past
Speaker 1: times for those who had the leisure to pursue such things.
Speaker 1: But to play lawn games, you gotta cut the grass,
Speaker 1: otherwise you're gonna spend more time trying to find the
Speaker 1: game equipment than you get to play with the darn things.
Speaker 1: Now we're gonna come back to the evolution of the lawn,
Speaker 1: particularly in America, and just a little bit as that
Speaker 1: history ties into a lot of other interesting stuff and
Speaker 1: includes some heavy duty connections to other elements of American
Speaker 1: society in addition to feeding an entire industry dedicated to
Speaker 1: lawn care and maintenance. But let's get back to our
Speaker 1: early history of lawn mowers. Okay, So, by the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: lawns were the rage and in land France and starting
Speaker 1: to be in America. But as I said, unless you
Speaker 1: had livestock or the cash to pay laborers, you probably
Speaker 1: couldn't maintain a lawn on your own. You certainly couldn't
Speaker 1: do so to the immaculate standards of the aristocracy. The
Speaker 1: 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, and b while over there the whole
Speaker 1: 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: combs or or prickly flowers even to pull some of
Speaker 1: those 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 did 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 Butting's 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 blade 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've got 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: eight 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 length, so, in other words,
Speaker 1: you could adjust how tall the grass 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 wooden 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: it 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 Farrabee, 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: Fairby then began to license the design to other engineers
Speaker 1: to other iron works owners, including Ransoms of Ipswich, 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 that persons unpracticed
Speaker 1: in the art of mowing may cut the grass on
Speaker 1: lawns and bowling greens with ease end quote and the 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 things.
Speaker 1: You just grabbed the handle of the mower and you
Speaker 1: pushed it forward, kind of like a cart. You would
Speaker 1: exert a little bit of a downward push as you did.
Speaker 1: So it took far less skilled than scything did. And
Speaker 1: by framing the activity of mowing a lawn as a
Speaker 1: means of taking exercise and being out in nature, the
Speaker 1: companies were slowly shifting the perception of caring for a
Speaker 1: lawn in general. And this would also help later on
Speaker 1: as the lawn mower 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 that 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 toward 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. Buttings 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 pony, which allowed him
Speaker 1: to make even larger lawnmowers that would be far too
Speaker 1: heavy for a person to push or pull on their own.
Speaker 1: To prevent the horses from damaging the grass. Let's say
Speaker 1: that you're cutting the grass on a golf course, something
Speaker 1: that was very common in Scotland or tennis courts. Well,
Speaker 1: they would put little leather shoes on the horses hoofs,
Speaker 1: so the horse would be wearing booties in order to
Speaker 1: mow the lawn. In the eighteen fifties, inventor Thomas Green
Speaker 1: made some adjustments of his own to the lawnmower design,
Speaker 1: and one simple tweak was that he added a rake
Speaker 1: to help lift grass blades up a little bit for cutting,
Speaker 1: so that way you didn't end up with any missed bits.
Speaker 1: But in the late eighteen fifties he made a much
Speaker 1: more substantial change. He created a chain drive for the
Speaker 1: mower's blades instead of the gear drive that Budding had created,
Speaker 1: and by removing the need for so many cast iron
Speaker 1: gears and replacing them with a chain, he made the
Speaker 1: lawnmowers design simpler and importantly lighter. It was also apparently
Speaker 1: less noisy, as Green called is lawnmower the Sileon's messar
Speaker 1: for silent running. By this time, thirty years after the
Speaker 1: invention of the lawnmower, word had reached America, and in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty eight an inventor from Connecticut named Amariah Hills
Speaker 1: received a patent for improvements to Budding's lawnmower design, which
Speaker 1: included changing out a cylinder covered in blades to an
Speaker 1: open spiral cutter. So just imagine a helix of blades,
Speaker 1: but you no longer have the mounted on a cylinder.
Speaker 1: It's almost like it's just two blades. And that that
Speaker 1: mount two wheels on either side that can turn. Uh.
Speaker 1: He also allowed more fine tuning for the cutting height
Speaker 1: and changed how the handle attached to the frame of
Speaker 1: the mower, and his design would go on to become
Speaker 1: a very popular mower in the northeastern United states, sometimes
Speaker 1: called an archimedian mower because the blades resembled the classic
Speaker 1: archimedian screw. Many of these machines saw you in parks
Speaker 1: and for maintaining stuff like golf courses and tennis courts
Speaker 1: and the like. But over in America they would also
Speaker 1: be sought after because of a few other big factors,
Speaker 1: and one is the growth of the suburbs. So, after
Speaker 1: the Civil War in America and as the US was
Speaker 1: having its own boom in industry, cities were becoming more
Speaker 1: industrialized in general, and many people, at least many wealthy people,
Speaker 1: the people who could afford it, moved out of the
Speaker 1: cities and settled in surrounding areas near the cities, forming
Speaker 1: the suburbs. And like the French and English aristocracy a
Speaker 1: century earlier, many of them saw a well maintained lawn
Speaker 1: as something of a status symbol. So there was a
Speaker 1: general movement toward cutting lawns, which must have pleased Amiah
Speaker 1: Hill as it represented a demand for those Archimedean mowers.
Speaker 1: And in eighteen seventy, Frank J. Scott's The Art of
Speaker 1: Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds of Small Extent hit the presses.
Speaker 1: This book, which is six d eighteen pages in length,
Speaker 1: if we don't include all the advertisements. At the end
Speaker 1: of the book, it goes to what I can only
Speaker 1: describe as excruciating detail regarding how to make your lawn
Speaker 1: look absolutely magnificent, and further, you are a monster if
Speaker 1: you don't do it. You can read the whole thing
Speaker 1: over on the Smithsonian Libraries website if you would like.
Speaker 1: If you want to skip to the juicy stuff, go
Speaker 1: to page one, D seven, Chapter thirteen, The Lawn. The
Speaker 1: chapter opens up with a couple of references to poetry,
Speaker 1: followed by this passage quote, A smooth, closely shaven surface
Speaker 1: of grass is by far the most essential element of
Speaker 1: beauty on the grounds of a suburban home. End quote boom,
Speaker 1: mic drop. You don't mow your grass, you are an
Speaker 1: affront to beauty. Now I'm being a little, you know,
Speaker 1: facetious here, but Scott was arguing that in an age
Speaker 1: in which companies were laying down train tracks or street
Speaker 1: car lines more people from far and wide, we're passing
Speaker 1: through different neighborhoods and then judging those neighborhoods based on
Speaker 1: their aesthetic beauty or lack thereof, and isn't it more
Speaker 1: American to be proud of your community and to show
Speaker 1: it off with distinction. So rich suburbanites ate that stuff
Speaker 1: up man and so lawn care started to be a
Speaker 1: big business. It was boosted more with related inventions such
Speaker 1: as Joseph Lessler's lawn sprinkler, which could attach to a
Speaker 1: garden hose. Lawns need a good deal of water to
Speaker 1: remain healthy. That's what kind of touch on that again
Speaker 1: in a bit. And this was a way where you
Speaker 1: could water your lawn without having to do a lot
Speaker 1: of backbreaking work in the process. And again, the concept
Speaker 1: of lawn care being connected to exercise and being out
Speaker 1: of doors was a big part of all this too.
Speaker 1: So while America's obsession with lawn care began to take root,
Speaker 1: so to speak, we had other stuff going on at
Speaker 1: the same time. Sometime around or so, inventors began to
Speaker 1: incorporate the next logical element for lawnmowers steam engines. Yes,
Speaker 1: steam powered lawnmowers were a thing briefly, and why not.
Speaker 1: Steam engines had already been used for trains for decades,
Speaker 1: so why not strap a big old boiler to a
Speaker 1: mechanical lawnmower. And make the boiling water do all the work.
Speaker 1: So here's how these things worked. In general. You had
Speaker 1: your boiler, which is the name suggests, is the container
Speaker 1: holding the water that gets boiled off to produce steam.
Speaker 1: The boiler is pressurized so the steam can't just escape
Speaker 1: and has to go through a specific route. And typically
Speaker 1: you would have a valve that would allow steam to
Speaker 1: pass through under really incredible pressure. So a furnace heats
Speaker 1: the boiler up, the water starts to boil off, and
Speaker 1: the steam builds up and passes through valves to a
Speaker 1: cylinder that has a piston in it. The steam forces
Speaker 1: the piston down the length of the cylinder until the
Speaker 1: piston passes an exhaust valve, whereupon the steam escapes the cylinder,
Speaker 1: the piston returns to its starting position, and the whole
Speaker 1: thing can happen again. Attaching mechanical elements to the piston
Speaker 1: via a piston rod allows you to transfer that mechanical
Speaker 1: motion to other components such as the wheels and the
Speaker 1: cutting blades of a lawnmower. And bang, now you don't
Speaker 1: have to push it yourself or hitch it to a
Speaker 1: horse or something. You just gotta fill up the boiler
Speaker 1: from time to time. You gotta keep that furnace going
Speaker 1: and keep it really hot, and you know, you just
Speaker 1: gotta not explode, which is something that can happen if
Speaker 1: pressure builds up in a boiler and the steam has
Speaker 1: nowhere to go. But hey, a boiler explosion is a
Speaker 1: small price to pay for a well manicured lawn. Right. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm clearly getting snow archy 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 two wheels and the blades. It's neat, if a
Speaker 1: little intimidating. These things were huge, and they had to
Speaker 1: be because if you're using steam, you need to have
Speaker 1: a big boiler to hold enough water so that you've
Speaker 1: got the the mp for your your engine. These clearly
Speaker 1: were not intended for the average homeowner or even the
Speaker 1: upper middle class or lower upper class homeowners. These were
Speaker 1: more for you know, larger, more regularly level areas. They
Speaker 1: didn't do well if there were hills or anything like that,
Speaker 1: so these were more frequently used for something like a
Speaker 1: a flat land, endscaped park, or you know, a sporting
Speaker 1: 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 out of
Speaker 1: its predecessor for a couple of good reasons. But first
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. Before I get into more
Speaker 1: modern mowers, I should mention another inventor, this one named
Speaker 1: John Albert Burr. He made changes to the classic cylindrical
Speaker 1: lawnmower design so that the gears wouldn't easily get gummed
Speaker 1: up with lawn clippings. Essentially, they figured out, hey, if
Speaker 1: we cover these gears up so that the lawn clippings
Speaker 1: can't get in the gearworks, then you're not gonna have
Speaker 1: as many jams as you try and mow your lawn.
Speaker 1: He also created a mower that would allow landscapers to
Speaker 1: mow more closely to the edge of walls and buildings
Speaker 1: to get a neater cut. Also, around this time, improvements
Speaker 1: in manufacturing meant that companies could mass produce lawnmowers, which
Speaker 1: also meant the costs of production dropped, and that meant
Speaker 1: companies could drop the prices of those machines, and that
Speaker 1: meant more people were able to afford lawnmowers, and in
Speaker 1: American particular, that meant booming business. As the idea that
Speaker 1: a well kept lawn was an important component of being
Speaker 1: seen as an upstanding member of society it had really
Speaker 1: taken hold here. So this combination of elements led to
Speaker 1: a lot more people buying lawnmowers. And when I say that,
Speaker 1: remember I'm 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, the company
Speaker 1: I mentioned much earlier in this episode as one of
Speaker 1: the first to license Budding's lawnmower design for production, Well,
Speaker 1: they created the first lawnmower that used an internal combustion
Speaker 1: engine for power. This was a ride on mower and
Speaker 1: it was a big one. So this was not a
Speaker 1: push mower. This this was a gigantic monstrosity. In fact,
Speaker 1: the images I've seen of this thing make it look
Speaker 1: like there's a gentleman in a jacket and tweed hat
Speaker 1: who is taking a printing press out for a ride
Speaker 1: or something. It's a machine with big, heavy chains, enormous rollers,
Speaker 1: a large container in front to catch clippings, and whirling
Speaker 1: blades of destruction underneath. It looks pretty awesome, I think,
Speaker 1: and almost unreal. It certainly isn't what I think of
Speaker 1: when someone says lawn mower to me. The internal combustion
Speaker 1: engine was the death knell for steam powered lawnmowers. While
Speaker 1: Ransom's ride on mower was huge, the switch to an
Speaker 1: internal combustion engine would lead to smaller lawnmower designs. And
Speaker 1: you didn't need an enormous boiler like you would with
Speaker 1: a steam powered one, nor did you have to stoke
Speaker 1: some sort of furnace to keep things going. You just
Speaker 1: needed some petrol in the fuel tank. Now, I've talked
Speaker 1: about how internal combustion engines work and other episodes, so
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go into all that detail here,
Speaker 1: but I will say that the early versions of the
Speaker 1: motor powered lawn mowers really in other forms, seemed to
Speaker 1: be 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 cylindrical approach in which the blades
Speaker 1: would rotate around that horizontal axis, the internal combustion engine
Speaker 1: al out for a lawnmower with a vertical act soul
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 talked 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 halves 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, alright. So flash
Speaker 1: forward to the nineteen forties. The United States enters World
Speaker 1: War Two and sends more than sixteen million Americans to serve.
Speaker 1: During the war, more than four hundred thousand of those
Speaker 1: Americans died in action and another six hundred seventy thousand
Speaker 1: were wounded. At the time, racial segregation was still very
Speaker 1: much in practice even in the military, and the number
Speaker 1: of black people serving in the US military actually represented
Speaker 1: a lower percentage than the demographics of black people relatives
Speaker 1: to the general US population at the time, But there
Speaker 1: were still thousands of black soldiers and volunteers who were
Speaker 1: active in the theater of war, including soldiers on the
Speaker 1: front lines. Back home, the United States government passed the
Speaker 1: Servicemen's Readjustment Act of nineteen forty four, better known as
Speaker 1: the g I Bill. The purpose of the bill was
Speaker 1: to create a support system for soldiers returning home that
Speaker 1: included important infrastructure like the construction of hospitals, but it
Speaker 1: also included the chance to go to college tuition free
Speaker 1: up to five dollars, which, hey, how about those college
Speaker 1: tuition increases, y'all. They could also secure low interest mortgage
Speaker 1: authors on homes through banks because the government was backing
Speaker 1: those loans. So these soldiers, some of whom had been
Speaker 1: overseas for years, were to be given some assistance upon
Speaker 1: returning home to make up for the fact that they
Speaker 1: had to leave their lives, their loved ones, and their
Speaker 1: livelihoods all behind. And that bill meant that millions of
Speaker 1: returning soldiers would be able to buy a home for
Speaker 1: the first time in the suburbs and follow the American
Speaker 1: dream of a white picket fence and a well manicured lawn.
Speaker 1: That is, they could do it if they were white.
Speaker 1: While the bill ostensibly offered benefits to all returning veterans,
Speaker 1: regardless of race or gender, in practice it was far
Speaker 1: more common to see those benefits go to white male veterans,
Speaker 1: and black veterans also frequently found it really hard to
Speaker 1: secure a loan from a bank for a mortgage, even
Speaker 1: with the guaranteed government backing that came from the g
Speaker 1: I Bill, and so the suburban home and along with it,
Speaker 1: the American lawn became sort of an extended marker for
Speaker 1: segregation and racial discrimination. Now, did this mean that all
Speaker 1: white people who enjoyed maintaining their lawn were racist for
Speaker 1: doing so, No, of course not. Rather, they were privileged
Speaker 1: and that they had more opportunities to secure a home
Speaker 1: in the suburbs and a lawn to maintain than people
Speaker 1: of color had. And that's also to point out that
Speaker 1: there were black people moving into suburbs and having lawns,
Speaker 1: but from a systematic point of view, they were doing
Speaker 1: so by overcoming obstacles that their white neighbors just didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily face. The post World War two era saw an
Speaker 1: economic boom, and along with developments like color printing, radio, television,
Speaker 1: we also saw a boom in advertising. And you better
Speaker 1: believe companies that were making lawn care products and machinery,
Speaker 1: including lawnmowers, were leaning heavily on promoting the idea that
Speaker 1: a neat, orderly lawn reflects well on homeowners and that
Speaker 1: the products they were selling would help you achieve that
Speaker 1: dream of homogeneous perfection that plays a pardon it too.
Speaker 1: The US in the nineteen fifties was an era of conformity.
Speaker 1: There was an intense pressure to create the ideal of perfection. Honestly,
Speaker 1: when we look at stuff like how people will manufacture
Speaker 1: these perfect photos for their social media platforms like their Instagram,
Speaker 1: to me, it feels like it's that same mentality coming
Speaker 1: back into play. Sure, your life might be a shambles,
Speaker 1: but dang it, your lawn looks nice, and so to
Speaker 1: the outside world, you're just fine. Now, maybe I'm getting
Speaker 1: a bit too off target here. Let's get back to lawnmowers.
Speaker 1: So by the nineteen fifties we started seeing the rotary
Speaker 1: style lawnmowers that ran on gas hitting the market. This
Speaker 1: is where we get that iconic starter chord, the pull
Speaker 1: chord that can foil us as we try to get
Speaker 1: that little bit of fuel that's been pumped into the
Speaker 1: engine to catch on before giving that that chord a
Speaker 1: big rip or three to try and get the engine
Speaker 1: to start. And I don't think I've ever talked about
Speaker 1: how a poll start or rope start engine works. So
Speaker 1: let's just cover that super quickly, shall we. All Right,
Speaker 1: So inside the lawnmower, you've got a reel, and you've
Speaker 1: got a chord wound around that reel. The end of
Speaker 1: that chord is attached to a handle that's on the
Speaker 1: outside the lawnmower. That's the part that you grip and pull.
Speaker 1: Attached to the real inside the lawnmower is a spring,
Speaker 1: So pulling the cord will cause the spring to extend
Speaker 1: and it wants to contract, so that's the force you're feeling.
Speaker 1: The tension you feel is the spring trying to contract
Speaker 1: a ina so when you let go of the cord,
Speaker 1: it goes back into the you know, the lawnmower because
Speaker 1: that spring is compressing well. Also attached to the reel
Speaker 1: is the clutch of the engine, and as the real turns,
Speaker 1: it transmits rotational energy to the crank shaft. If the
Speaker 1: crank shaft turns quickly enough, a pair of magnets connected
Speaker 1: to 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 engine's 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 provide 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. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I guess I need to go mow the lawn, So
Speaker 1: let's wrap this episode up. If you guys have suggestions
Speaker 1: for topics I can cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: please reach out to me. The best way to do
Speaker 1: so is on Twitter. To handle is text stuff H
Speaker 1: s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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