Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you of? So it's Memorial Day here in
Speaker 1: the United States, and that means we're off and I'm
Speaker 1: currently out of town as you listen to this, but
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring you an episode anyway. So this
Speaker 1: is an episode that actually aired just a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. Fifteenth, twenty twenty one is when it originally published.
Speaker 1: It's titled How Medieval Warfare Led to the Lawnmower? And yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one of those examples of me going back
Speaker 1: in order to tell a story and just keep going
Speaker 1: back over and over again to kind of find out, well,
Speaker 1: what's the genesis for this technology, and arguably, in the
Speaker 1: case of the lawnmower, it's medieval warfare. I hope you enjoy,
Speaker 1: and I hope for those of you in the United
Speaker 1: States rating that you have a happy and safe holiday.
Speaker 1: I'll chat with you again at the end. While I've
Speaker 1: been 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. This
Speaker 1: is the normal now. However, at the office, there is
Speaker 1: no chance that my dog will be barking in the
Speaker 1: background while I record, and so far, I think I've
Speaker 1: mostly avoided having him show up on episodes of Tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: but only because I've edited around it. Keep telling him
Speaker 1: if he wants to be on a show, he should
Speaker 1: get his own podcast, but I'm also scared that if
Speaker 1: he does that, he'll get way more popular than me.
Speaker 1: You're also not likely to hear other extraneous noises at
Speaker 1: the office because there our studios or recording studios are
Speaker 1: all in rooms that don't have a window to the
Speaker 1: outside world built into them. Though you can still occasionally
Speaker 1: pick up sounds of folks who are chatting in the
Speaker 1: office outside the studios, because well, at least in the office,
Speaker 1: we used to be a pretty chatty lot. So if
Speaker 1: you listen to any of the stuff shows, if you
Speaker 1: listen very carefully, you might occasionally hear the sounds of
Speaker 1: people talking outside that studio room. That's because there are
Speaker 1: desks and stuff just on the other side of those doors.
Speaker 1: But one noise that has been a particular issue for
Speaker 1: me while working at home has been the sound of
Speaker 1: the landscape crew that's working on the courtyard outside the
Speaker 1: townhouse I live in. They always seem to show up
Speaker 1: just as I'm getting ready to record. And then I thought, Hey,
Speaker 1: how about I talk about the history of lawnmowers and
Speaker 1: how they work. That could be a great topic and
Speaker 1: turn that frustration I feel into an episode. So let's
Speaker 1: begin with some etymology, which I am now being told
Speaker 1: is not the study of bugs, but rather the origin
Speaker 1: of words. So we think of a lawn, you know,
Speaker 1: as a grassy area like a yard, typically covered by
Speaker 1: turf grass in fact, and that is somewhat kept in
Speaker 1: an orderly fashion, partly by cutting the grass fairly low.
Speaker 1: But where does the word lawn come from? Well, the
Speaker 1: word derives from a Middle English word of lone, meaning
Speaker 1: an unwooded field or an open space in the woods,
Speaker 1: like a glade. Thanks Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, now y'all
Speaker 1: might know. Now, back in my college days, I studied
Speaker 1: medieval literature, including Old and Middle English texts, 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 Fowls that mentions
Speaker 1: a londe, 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 hundred
Speaker 1: lines long. But I will give you the little bit
Speaker 1: of it that's about the lounde. And the passage goes
Speaker 1: like this, and then a londa upon the Hilla of
Speaker 1: Flores was set. This nobler goddess Natier of branches were
Speaker 1: here Hollis and herbores. He wrought after her craft, and
Speaker 1: here measure. Now, this passage goes on a bit longer,
Speaker 1: but honestly, I would just be indulging my own love
Speaker 1: of medieval English lit, so I'm going to cut it off. There.
Speaker 1: What that passage means in modern English is and in
Speaker 1: an opening in the woods, on a hill covered with
Speaker 1: flowers sat the goddess Nature. Her home was made of
Speaker 1: branches and arranged according to her art. So it's a
Speaker 1: pretty little passage. And here Londa refers to something you
Speaker 1: might encounter if you were walking through the countryside, through
Speaker 1: the wooded forests of old England or old France, and
Speaker 1: then at one point you encounter an opening in the
Speaker 1: forest where there aren't any trees. So how did it
Speaker 1: come to mean the word lawn that we use today? Well,
Speaker 1: to understand that, we have to talk about war. Yes,
Speaker 1: just as many a homeowner has suspected lawn care and
Speaker 1: warfare go hand in hand. Okay, So you got your
Speaker 1: big medieval big wig types. You know, you got your
Speaker 1: kings and your lords and your earls and whatnot. And
Speaker 1: occasionally these types would lead large groups of warriors to
Speaker 1: conquer other medieval big wig types, something like a, Hey,
Speaker 1: those guys over there got it pretty good, so why
Speaker 1: don't we go over there and take their stuff and
Speaker 1: make it our stuff? And so the world turns upon
Speaker 1: such thoughts. But it's not enough to conquer the people
Speaker 1: who live on the other side of the hills or
Speaker 1: river or ocean or whatever. You got to hold on
Speaker 1: to the land that you've claimed, right, and that means
Speaker 1: creating fortifications, preferably in places where you can get a
Speaker 1: pretty good look at your surroundings to make sure no
Speaker 1: other medieval big wigs get the same bright idea you got.
Speaker 1: And then they come to take your stuff, and it
Speaker 1: used to be someone else's stuff, because you know, there's
Speaker 1: always a bigger fish, as it were. So you build
Speaker 1: up your forts or your castles as it were, to
Speaker 1: protect your assets. Your castles are your defense system where
Speaker 1: you can pull back if necessary if enemies come to call.
Speaker 1: But you can't really be on the lookout for the
Speaker 1: next bully if you can't see the armies for the trees, right,
Speaker 1: and so it gets to chopping. You chop, chop, chop
Speaker 1: all those trees down around your fortifications so that you
Speaker 1: can see folks from a long way off if they're approaching,
Speaker 1: and you can prepare if there's an imminent attack. It
Speaker 1: also helps if you know, you don't leave trees around
Speaker 1: for people to cut down and turn into stuff like
Speaker 1: battering ramps. So there's that element as well. So rather
Speaker 1: than wooded fields, you have grassy ones. And this is
Speaker 1: the origin of the lawn though back in those days
Speaker 1: the lawns weren't exactly you know, pristine, So to maintain
Speaker 1: the lawns. You'd either have livestock go out to the
Speaker 1: fields to graze, thus cutting back the grass by eating it,
Speaker 1: as well as fertilizing the land on occasion, you know,
Speaker 1: when nature called, or you could have laborers go out
Speaker 1: to the fields with hand tools like scythes and sickles
Speaker 1: to cut back the grass manually so that it wasn't
Speaker 1: too high. A sickle is a handheld tool that has
Speaker 1: a handle, typically made out of wood, and on the
Speaker 1: business end, you've got a curved blade sticking out from
Speaker 1: the handle, making kind of like a almost like a half moon,
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of crescent shaped, and the blade
Speaker 1: is also typically at an angle relative to the handle,
Speaker 1: sort of how a razor has an angle to it
Speaker 1: for the purposes of shaving. A scythe is similar, but
Speaker 1: it's much larger. It's a two handed tool. The grim
Speaker 1: reaper carries a scythe, and cutting with either a sickle
Speaker 1: or a scythe involves making horizontal passes, typically at the
Speaker 1: base of the grass, and you cut in an arc
Speaker 1: from one side to the other, and big arcing swings,
Speaker 1: so semi circular swings, and those swings only go in
Speaker 1: one direction. The blade is sharpened on the inside curve,
Speaker 1: not the outside curve, and you're typically going right to
Speaker 1: left because the handle for the forward hand on a
Speaker 1: scythe is meant to be held with the right hand.
Speaker 1: The left hand is meant to hold the scythe further
Speaker 1: back on the handle, So in other words, this is
Speaker 1: yet another right handed tool. Scything can actually be pretty efficient.
Speaker 1: There are actually there's some great videos on YouTube of
Speaker 1: people who have really gotten skilled with scything and they
Speaker 1: can make short work of an overgrown lawn, like they
Speaker 1: can cut that stuff down quickly. I suggest to check
Speaker 1: it out. It's just neat to watch. And the angle
Speaker 1: of the blade determines how short the side will cut
Speaker 1: the grass using a sythe with a good blade angle,
Speaker 1: a skilled wheelder can cut the grass very low and
Speaker 1: pretty efficiently too, and you would have the bottom part
Speaker 1: of the blade actually making contact with the ground as
Speaker 1: you swing the scythe from right to left. They also
Speaker 1: tend to have to rake up the yard afterward to
Speaker 1: gather up all the trimmings. We're usually looking at fields
Speaker 1: that have, you know, grass that's quite high, like maybe
Speaker 1: a foot high or maybe taller, so you need to
Speaker 1: have something to rake up all the the clippings that
Speaker 1: you've left behind. I've seen a lot of videos of
Speaker 1: folks using sides in order to cut back on, you know,
Speaker 1: relying on fossil fuels, and to make use of the
Speaker 1: trimmings in various ways from compost to making hey while
Speaker 1: the sun shines. In some videos, I've seen folks use
Speaker 1: sides more effectively than someone who is using a mechanical
Speaker 1: push mower or a weed whacker, though power mowers do
Speaker 1: tend to be more efficient than a scythe. So a
Speaker 1: push mower, like a mechanical one where there's no motor,
Speaker 1: it's just from human power that versus a scythe, you
Speaker 1: might actually see someone be more effective with the side
Speaker 1: than with the push mower. A weed whackers, same thing,
Speaker 1: the push mower that has a motor on it, those
Speaker 1: tend to win out in the end. So it really
Speaker 1: does start to make you wonder, however, why the heck
Speaker 1: did anyone think to invent the mechanical lawnmower in the
Speaker 1: first place. If a scythe can be as efficient, why
Speaker 1: would any oneever think about making a mechanical invention that
Speaker 1: does effectively the same sort of thing. The first lawnmowers
Speaker 1: were purely mechanical, relying on gears and blades that were
Speaker 1: mounted on a drum like cylinder. And if those aren't
Speaker 1: more efficient than a scythe why would you bother? And
Speaker 1: the answer is drum roll please vanity. See. While in
Speaker 1: the medieval era soldiers wanted to get a good view
Speaker 1: of what might be coming at them throughout Europe, particularly
Speaker 1: in France and England, the strategic usefulness of castles gradually
Speaker 1: declined in the Middle Ages, largely because of advancements in artillery.
Speaker 1: Cannons could make very short work of castle walls and
Speaker 1: so warfare began to change and castles weren't part of that.
Speaker 1: But you still had all these hoity toity types who
Speaker 1: liked the idea of a well maintained lawn. Again, mostly
Speaker 1: in France and England. That's really where this idea took hold,
Speaker 1: and this was definitely an issue of vanity, particularly when
Speaker 1: it came to showing off your prestige. Lawns are not
Speaker 1: natural environments. When you get down to it, they can
Speaker 1: be environmentally unfriendly. They represent a much more limited biome
Speaker 1: than a natural grassy or wooded area. It's an artificial construct.
Speaker 1: It's really an example of humans cutting back nature to
Speaker 1: suit our own esthetics. And really it was only the
Speaker 1: hoidy toidy types doing this, because maintaining a lawn was
Speaker 1: a lot of work. Not that the hoiity toidy types
Speaker 1: were the ones doing the work, mind you, but they
Speaker 1: were the ones who could afford livestock or laborers who
Speaker 1: would trim back stuff for them. So from manor houses
Speaker 1: to inhabited castles you had the practice of maintaining these
Speaker 1: large grassy areas. Now, some of that sensibility would also
Speaker 1: find its way over to the New World where it
Speaker 1: really took hold. Now, the grasses in the New World
Speaker 1: were different than those found in Europe. But when settlers
Speaker 1: came to North America, they brought with them livestock, and
Speaker 1: apparently the livestock really liked the grass in America so
Speaker 1: much so that they ding dang durnate it all. So
Speaker 1: to keep the livestock from starving, the colonists were importing
Speaker 1: grass seeds from Europe and North Africa, including grass is that,
Speaker 1: if you were to go by their names, sound like
Speaker 1: they come from America. Kentucky Bluegrass, 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 Mount Vernon into
Speaker 1: a mirror of European standards. And certainly the idea of
Speaker 1: a well kept lawn managed to really take hold in America,
Speaker 1: becoming something of an obsession really, which we'll 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 sky.
Speaker 1: Scottish sports like golf and lawn bowling were brought over
Speaker 1: by Scottish immigrants to America and they became popular pastimes
Speaker 1: for those who had the leisure to pursue such things.
Speaker 1: But to play lawn games, you got to cut the grass,
Speaker 1: Otherwise you're going to spend more time trying to find
Speaker 1: the game equipment than you get to play with the
Speaker 1: darn things. Now we're going to come back to the
Speaker 1: evolution of the lawn, particularly in America, and just a
Speaker 1: little bit as that history ties into a lot of
Speaker 1: other interesting stuff and includes some heavy duty connections to
Speaker 1: other elements of American society, in addition to feeding an
Speaker 1: entire industry dedicated to lawn care and maintenance. But let's
Speaker 1: get back to our early history of lawnmowers. Okay, So
Speaker 1: 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 standard 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 sides,
Speaker 1: because cutting grass in those arc swings would leave behind
Speaker 1: patterns in the grass, and that was considered esthetically unpleasing.
Speaker 1: And then we come to an Englishman named Edwin Beard
Speaker 1: Budding born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, in seventeen ninety five. Butting
Speaker 1: started off with some strikes against him. His parents were unmarried,
Speaker 1: his father a farmer, and in England that put him
Speaker 1: at a fairly low social standing class in England was
Speaker 1: a very important concept still can be while over there
Speaker 1: he had the whole working class versus posh and all
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. So he started off in carpentry,
Speaker 1: but he switched over to working at iron foundries. The
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution was well underway in England at this point
Speaker 1: and the demand for iron tools and machinery was very high,
Speaker 1: and through experience Butting built up and understanding of engineering
Speaker 1: and problem solving, he would end up inventing several things
Speaker 1: or making his own version of some existing machines. But
Speaker 1: obviously the one we want to really look at is
Speaker 1: the lawnmower. Budding got the idea for the lawnmower when
Speaker 1: he saw a device used by textile mills to trim
Speaker 1: back the fibers that stick out from the surface of cloth,
Speaker 1: also known as the nap of a cloth, and with
Speaker 1: some textiles the goal is to fluff the nap out.
Speaker 1: You use little combs or prickly flowers even to pull
Speaker 1: some of those threads out, and then you comb it
Speaker 1: a certain way, which can make the cloth softer to
Speaker 1: the touch and better at doing stuff like trapping heat.
Speaker 1: But sometimes you just wanted a very smooth piece of cloth.
Speaker 1: Something that wouldn't get caught easily on rough surfaces. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you might want a carpet that could withstand
Speaker 1: more use as long as it did you know, catch
Speaker 1: on shoes and stuff. So you would want to shear
Speaker 1: the nap. You'd want to cut that nap close to
Speaker 1: the cloth. And in earlier days this job was done
Speaker 1: by skilled tradespeople who would use giant sets of shears.
Speaker 1: I mean these things were massive in order to cut
Speaker 1: the nap off the surface of the cloth as efficiently
Speaker 1: as possible. But by Butting's time, some genius whose name
Speaker 1: is lost to history came up with the notion of
Speaker 1: building a mechanical device that has blades arranged around a
Speaker 1: drum or cylinder in a type of helix shape. The
Speaker 1: drum or cylinder rotates, and by running the surface of
Speaker 1: the cloth near this helix of blades, the blades could
Speaker 1: trim back the nap on the surface of the cloth.
Speaker 1: Add in some rollers and some other elements to pull
Speaker 1: the cloth along, and you cut yourself a machine that
Speaker 1: can trim the nap back on cloth evenly, consistently, and efficiently. Aha,
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 eighty one in fact for his invention.
Speaker 1: I'll explain more about it after this quick break. Butting
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 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 for something orderly and neat, which very much fit
Speaker 1: in with the sensibilities of the elite of nineteenth century Britain.
Speaker 1: So Edwin Beard Budding built a wheeled machine out of
Speaker 1: wrought and cast iron. It had a pair of wheels.
Speaker 1: It also had a pair of rollers and a forward
Speaker 1: roller and a back roller, as well as the blade
Speaker 1: mounted cylinder that did the actual cutting. So imagine you've
Speaker 1: got a mechanical device has a small roller in the front.
Speaker 1: This is the thing that can be adjusted so you
Speaker 1: can control how close to the ground you're cutting the grass.
Speaker 1: Behind that roller, you've got your horizontal cylinder that's got
Speaker 1: the curved blades arranged in a helix around that rotatable cylinder,
Speaker 1: so it rotates along the horizontal axis, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: To either side of that are the wheels of the lawnmower.
Speaker 1: That provides stability, allows you to actually aim it and
Speaker 1: push it along the ground. And then in the rear
Speaker 1: you have a big roller. It kind of looks like
Speaker 1: a more narrow and slightly smaller version of a steamroller,
Speaker 1: if that helps you imagine. This Buttings design also incorporated
Speaker 1: a tray to catch grass clippings. The tray was in
Speaker 1: the front because the way this machine worked, it would
Speaker 1: propel the clippings out, shooting them out toward the front
Speaker 1: of the machine. That way, you wouldn't have to follow
Speaker 1: behind the lawnmower with a rake or something like that
Speaker 1: to rake up the clippings. And it was that rear roller,
Speaker 1: the big steamroller 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 rotationational motion to the cylinder or the
Speaker 1: drum 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 transmit the rotation to the cylinder, and each step
Speaker 1: of that process, each gear connection, means that you're losing
Speaker 1: a little bit of the amount of energy you're giving
Speaker 1: to the system to stuff like friction, So it means
Speaker 1: you have to push even harder to get things going.
Speaker 1: But still, Butting showed that the same general principle that
Speaker 1: worked for cutting back the nap on cloth could in
Speaker 1: fact be used to cut grass. He patented his design
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty and in that patent, Butting sent his
Speaker 1: invention represented, quote a new combination and application of machinery
Speaker 1: for the purpose of crop or shearing the vegetable surfaces
Speaker 1: of lawns, grass plats and pleasure grounds. Country gentlemen may
Speaker 1: find in using my machine themselves an amusing, useful, and
Speaker 1: healthy exercise. End. It's interesting to note that a lot
Speaker 1: of the basic designs introduced by Budding would stick around
Speaker 1: throughout the ages with mechanical push mowers, and the ones
Speaker 1: that we have today have at least some resemblance to
Speaker 1: the one that Budding was making back in the mid
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Now the new ones are more elegant in
Speaker 1: design and they're made of much lighter materials, but the
Speaker 1: general principle behind the operation remains pretty much the same.
Speaker 1: Budding formed a partnership with an engineer named John Ferrabee,
Speaker 1: who owned a company called Phoenix Ironworks. Faerbe had the
Speaker 1: manufacturing rights to produce Budding's design and fronted the costs
Speaker 1: to develop the prototype, and one of the earliest lawnmowers
Speaker 1: that the pair reduced went to the London Zoo, and
Speaker 1: another one became the property of Oxford University. By eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty two, word had already spread that Budding's machine could
Speaker 1: create great results, and demand was soon outpacing Farabe's capacity
Speaker 1: to produce lawnmowers, and Farabe then began to license the
Speaker 1: design to other engineers, to other ironworks owners, including Ransoms
Speaker 1: of Ipswich, a company that was already in the business
Speaker 1: of producing plows for farmers. They advertised the new lawnmower
Speaker 1: invention saying, quote the machine is so easy to manage
Speaker 1: that persons unpracticed in the art of mowing may cut
Speaker 1: the grass on lawns and bowling greens with ease end quote.
Speaker 1: In other words, they were kind of positioning this as
Speaker 1: something of a leisure activity for the upper class. That
Speaker 1: you know, mowing the lawn with a side that was
Speaker 1: a low class thing to do. That was for laborers.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't see people of the upper classes do that.
Speaker 1: It was beneath their station. But mowing with this exotic
Speaker 1: machine that was something befitting a person of high station.
Speaker 1: And it was, as a matter of fact, pretty simple
Speaker 1: to operate these things. You just grabbed the handle of
Speaker 1: the mower and you pushed it forward kind of like
Speaker 1: a cart. You would exert a little bit of a
Speaker 1: downward push as you did, so it took far less
Speaker 1: skill than scything did. And by framing the activity of
Speaker 1: mowing a lawn as a means of taking exercise and
Speaker 1: being out in nature, the companies were slowly shifting the
Speaker 1: perception of caring for a lawn in general. And this
Speaker 1: would also help later on, as the lawnmower would be
Speaker 1: marketed toward the middle class, when the prices would eventually
Speaker 1: come down. Now, when I say the demand was outstripping supply,
Speaker 1: we have to remember that manufacturing in the eighteen thirties
Speaker 1: wasn't nearly as efficient as it would be a century later.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to give you the impression that
Speaker 1: the lawnmower became the must have Christmas gift of eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty two or something. When Butting passed away in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty six because of a stroke, the lawnmower was a
Speaker 1: successful invention, but it was not yet a household item,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't like Budding had become a millionaire. In fact,
Speaker 1: he died before really seeing his invention get adopted around England,
Speaker 1: France and America. By the eighteen sixties, Farrabe's Iron Works
Speaker 1: had produced around five thousand lawnmowers, and that included a
Speaker 1: small range of designs which mainly had to do with
Speaker 1: the width of the lawnmower. A wider lawnmower can obviously
Speaker 1: cut a wider strip of grass, which means you don't
Speaker 1: have to do as many passes on a lawn or
Speaker 1: a field in order to complete a job, but it
Speaker 1: also means that the lawnmower gets heavier. Some of the
Speaker 1: designs incorporated a second handle on the lawnmower. This one
Speaker 1: would be toward the front of the machine, which meant
Speaker 1: you could actually pull it along behind you instead of
Speaker 1: pushing it in front of you. One design I saw
Speaker 1: had the handle on a hinge so you could swing
Speaker 1: the handle so you could swing it toward the rear
Speaker 1: of the machine and make it a push mower, or
Speaker 1: you could swing it to the front of the machine
Speaker 1: and make it a pull mower. Butting's design inspired others
Speaker 1: to make their own adjustments. In eighteen forty two, Alexander Shanks,
Speaker 1: an inventor from Scotland, made a version of the lawnmower
Speaker 1: that could be hitched to a horse or pony, which
Speaker 1: allowed him to make even larger lawnmowers that would be
Speaker 1: far too heavy for a person to push or pull
Speaker 1: on 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 horses who hooves, so the horse would be wearing
Speaker 1: booties 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 missed 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 Butting 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 lawnmower's design simpler and
Speaker 1: importantly lighter. It was also apparently less noisy, as Green
Speaker 1: called his lawnmower the silence messor 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 can Etiquette named Amariyah Hills received a patent
Speaker 1: for improvements to Budding's lawnmower design, which included changing out
Speaker 1: a cylinder covered in blades to an open spiral cutter.
Speaker 1: So just imagine a helix of blades, but you no
Speaker 1: longer have them mounted on a cylinder. It's almost like
Speaker 1: it's just two blades in that mount to wheels on
Speaker 1: either side that can turn. 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 Archimedean mower because
Speaker 1: the blades resembled the classic archimedean 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 after the Civil War in America, and
Speaker 1: as the US was having its own boom and 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 Amariah Hill as it represented a demand
Speaker 1: for those Archimedean mowers. And in eighteen seventy Frank J.
Speaker 1: Scott's The Art of Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds of small
Speaker 1: Extent hit the presses. This book, which is six hundred
Speaker 1: and eighteen pages in length, if we don't include all
Speaker 1: the advertisements. At the end of the book, it goes
Speaker 1: to what I can only describe as ex cruciating detail
Speaker 1: regarding how to make your lawn look absolutely magnificent, and further,
Speaker 1: you are a monster if you don't do it. You
Speaker 1: can read the whole thing over on the Smithsonian Library's
Speaker 1: website if you would like. If you want to skip
Speaker 1: to the juicy stuff, go to page one hundred and 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 an affront to beauty. Now
Speaker 1: I'm being a little, you know, facetious here, but Scott
Speaker 1: was arguing that in an age in which companies were
Speaker 1: laying down train tracks or streetcar lines, more people from
Speaker 1: far and wide were passing through different neighborhoods and then
Speaker 1: judging those neighborhoods based on their esthetic beauty or lack thereof.
Speaker 1: And isn't it more American to be proud of your
Speaker 1: community and to show it off with distinction. So rich
Speaker 1: suburbanites ate that stuff up man, and so lawn care
Speaker 1: started to be a big business. It was boosted more
Speaker 1: with related inventions such as Joseph Lessler's lawn sprinkler, which
Speaker 1: could attach to a garden hose. Lawns need a good
Speaker 1: deal of water to remain healthy. That we're kind of
Speaker 1: touch on that again in a bit. And this was
Speaker 1: a way where you could water your lawn without having
Speaker 1: 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: eighteen ninety or so, inventors began to incorporate the next
Speaker 1: logical element for lawnmowers steam engines. Yes, steam powered lawnmowers
Speaker 1: were a thing briefly, and why not. Steam engines had
Speaker 1: already been used for trains for decades, So why not
Speaker 1: strap a big old boiler to a mechanical lawnmower and
Speaker 1: make the boiling water do all the work. So here's
Speaker 1: how these things worked. In general. You had your boiler,
Speaker 1: which is the name suggests, is the container holding the
Speaker 1: water that gets boiled off to produce steam. The boiler
Speaker 1: is pressurized, so the steam can't just escape. It has
Speaker 1: to go through a specific route, and typically you would
Speaker 1: have a valve that would allow steam to pass through
Speaker 1: under really incredible pressure. So a furnace heats the boiler up,
Speaker 1: the water starts to boil off, and the steam builds
Speaker 1: up and passes through valves to a cylinder that has
Speaker 1: a piston in it. The steam forces the piston down
Speaker 1: the length of the cylinder until the piston passes an
Speaker 1: exhaust valve, whereupon the steam escapes the cylinder, the piston
Speaker 1: returns to its starting position, and the whole thing can
Speaker 1: happen again. Attaching mechanical elements to the piston via a
Speaker 1: piston rod allows you to transfer that mechanical motion to
Speaker 1: other components, such as the wheels and the cutting blades
Speaker 1: of a lawnmower. And bang, now you don't have to
Speaker 1: push it yourself or hitch it to a horse or something.
Speaker 1: You just got to fill up the boiler from time
Speaker 1: to time. You got to keep that furnace going and
Speaker 1: keep it really hot. And you know, you just got
Speaker 1: to 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 snarky again, but these lawnmowers did work,
Speaker 1: and I've seen some that looked like the result 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 oomph to the wheels and the blades. It's neat,
Speaker 1: if a little intimidating. These things were huge, and they
Speaker 1: had to be because if you're using steam, you need
Speaker 1: to have a big boiler to hold enough water so
Speaker 1: that you got the oomph for 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 larger, more regularly level areas. They didn't do
Speaker 1: well if there were hills or anything like that, so
Speaker 1: these were more frequently used for something like a flat
Speaker 1: landscaped park or a sporting area like a golf course,
Speaker 1: or maybe a tennis court. They also didn't stick around
Speaker 1: for very long. And when we come back, I'll talk
Speaker 1: about the development of the gas powered lawnmower, which would
Speaker 1: take the steam of its predecessor for a couple of
Speaker 1: good reasons. But first let's take another quick break. Before
Speaker 1: I get into more modern mowers, I should mention another inventor,
Speaker 1: this one named John Albert Burr. He made changes to
Speaker 1: the classic cylindrical lawnmower design so that the gears wouldn't
Speaker 1: easily get gummed up with lawn clippings. Essentially, they figured out, hey,
Speaker 1: if we cover these gears up so that the lawn
Speaker 1: clippings can't get in the gear works, then you're not
Speaker 1: going to have as many jams as you try and
Speaker 1: mow your lawn. He also created a mower that would
Speaker 1: allow landscapers to mow more closely to the edge of
Speaker 1: walls and buildings to get a neater cut. Also around
Speaker 1: this time, improvements in manufacturing meant that companies could mass
Speaker 1: produce lawnmowers, which also meant the costs of production dropped,
Speaker 1: and that meant companies could drop the prices of those machines,
Speaker 1: and that meant more people were able to afford lawnmowers,
Speaker 1: and in American in particular, that meant booming business. As
Speaker 1: the idea that a well kept lawn was an important
Speaker 1: component of being seen as an upstanding member of society
Speaker 1: it had really taken hold here. So this combination of
Speaker 1: elements led to a lot more people buying lawnmowers. And
Speaker 1: when I say that, remember I'm still talking about the
Speaker 1: mechanical push mower style devices. Well, the steam powered lawnmowers
Speaker 1: appeared on the scene in the eighteen nineties, but by
Speaker 1: nineteen oh two, Ransoms, the company I mentioned much earlier
Speaker 1: in this episode, is one of the first two license
Speaker 1: Budding's lawnmower design for production. Well, they created the first
Speaker 1: lawnmower that used an internal combustion engine for power. This
Speaker 1: was a ride on mower and it was a big one.
Speaker 1: So this was not a push mower. This this was
Speaker 1: a gigantic monstrosity. In fact, the images I've seen of
Speaker 1: this thing make it look like there's a gentleman in
Speaker 1: a jacket and tweed hat who is taking a printing
Speaker 1: press out for a ride or something. It's a machine
Speaker 1: with big, heavy chains, enormous rollers, a large container in
Speaker 1: front to catch clippings and whirling blades of destruction underneath.
Speaker 1: It looks pretty awesome, I think, and almost unreal. It
Speaker 1: certainly isn't what I think of when someone says lawnmower
Speaker 1: to me. The internal combustion engine was the death knell
Speaker 1: for steam powered lawnmowers. While Ransom's ride on mower was huge,
Speaker 1: the switch to an internal combustion engine would lead to
Speaker 1: smaller lawnmower designs, and you didn't need an enormous boiler
Speaker 1: like you would with a steam powered one. Nor did
Speaker 1: you have to stoke some sort of furnace to keep
Speaker 1: things going. You just needed some petrol in the fuel tank. Now,
Speaker 1: I've talked about how internal combustion engines work and other episodes,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to go in to all that
Speaker 1: detail here, but I will say that the early versions
Speaker 1: of the motor powered lawn mowers really in other forms,
Speaker 1: seem to be based on that cylindrical helix design along
Speaker 1: the horizontal axis, the same sort of design that Butting
Speaker 1: had proposed way back in eighteen thirty. So these were
Speaker 1: not the rotary mowers that we would see much later,
Speaker 1: not yet, but the advances in internal combustion engines, which
Speaker 1: would both make the mowers get smaller and more powerful.
Speaker 1: As various engineers made improvements to the engines that eventually
Speaker 1: did lead to the design of a different kind of lawnmower.
Speaker 1: So instead of that horizontal axis cylindrical approach in which
Speaker 1: the blades would rotate around that horizontal axis, the internal
Speaker 1: combustion engine allowed 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 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 haves versus the have nots. And this
Speaker 1: it was also going to have a lot to do
Speaker 1: about racial discrimination. Back in eighteen seventy when Scott's book
Speaker 1: hit 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 a community is preferable because there are no people
Speaker 1: of color living there. That's just gross, all right. So
Speaker 1: flash forward 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: and seventy thousand were wounded. At the time, racial segregation
Speaker 1: was still very much in practice even in the military,
Speaker 1: and the number of black people serving in the US
Speaker 1: military actually represented a lower percentage than the demographics of
Speaker 1: black 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 GI Bill. The purpose of the bill
Speaker 1: was to create a support system for soldiers returning home
Speaker 1: that included important infrastructure like the construction of hospitals, but
Speaker 1: it also included the chance to go to college tuition
Speaker 1: free up to five hundred 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 GI Bill. And so the suburban home
Speaker 1: and along with it, the American lawn became sort of
Speaker 1: an extended marker for segregation and racial discrimination. Now did
Speaker 1: this mean that all white people who enjoyed maintaining their
Speaker 1: lawn were racist for doing so, No, of course not. Rather,
Speaker 1: they were privileged and that they had more opportunities to
Speaker 1: secure a home in the suburbs and a lawn to
Speaker 1: maintain than people of color had and that's also to
Speaker 1: point out that there were black people moving into suburbs
Speaker 1: 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 II
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: part in it too. The US in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: was an era of conformity. There was an intense pressure
Speaker 1: to create the ideal of perfection. Honestly, when we look
Speaker 1: at stuff like how people will manufacture these perfect photos
Speaker 1: for their social media platforms like their Instagram, to me,
Speaker 1: it feels like it's that same mentality coming back into play. Sure,
Speaker 1: your life might be as shambles, but dang it, your
Speaker 1: lawn looks nice and so to the outside world. You're
Speaker 1: just fine. Now, maybe I'm getting a bit too off
Speaker 1: target here. Let's get back to lawnmowers. So by the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties we started seeing the rotary style lawnmowers that
Speaker 1: ran on gas hitting the market. This is where we
Speaker 1: get that iconic starter cord, the pull cord that can
Speaker 1: foil us as we try to get that little bit
Speaker 1: of fuel that's been pumped into the engine to catch
Speaker 1: on before giving that cord a big riper three to
Speaker 1: try and get the engine to start. And I don't
Speaker 1: think I've ever talked about how a poll start or
Speaker 1: rope start engine works. So let's just cover that super quickly,
Speaker 1: shall we. All Right, So inside the lawnmower, you've got
Speaker 1: a reel and you've got a cord wound around that reel.
Speaker 1: The end of that cord is attached to a handle
Speaker 1: that's on the outside of the lawnmower. That's the part
Speaker 1: that you grip and pull. Attached to the real inside
Speaker 1: the lawnmower is a spring. So pulling the cord will
Speaker 1: cause the spring to extend and it wants to contract,
Speaker 1: So that's the force you're feeling. The tension you feel
Speaker 1: is the spring trying to contract again, so when you
Speaker 1: let go of the cord, it goes back into the
Speaker 1: you know, the lawnmower because that spring is compressing well.
Speaker 1: Also attached to the reel is the clutch of the engine,
Speaker 1: and as the turns, it transmits rotational energy to the
Speaker 1: crank shaft. If the crank shaft turns quickly enough, a
Speaker 1: pair of magnets connected to a flywheel begin to move
Speaker 1: outward due to centrifugal force, and once they extend far enough,
Speaker 1: the magnets affect the ignition module so that it generates
Speaker 1: a spark and that sets off the combustion in the
Speaker 1: engine's cylinders, and once that gets going, the engine can
Speaker 1: take over. From there it can continue that cycle of
Speaker 1: sparking the spark plugs, assuming that there's fuel left in
Speaker 1: the tank to ignite due to those sparks. So a
Speaker 1: gas powered rotary lawn mower typically uses the engine to
Speaker 1: provide power to the blade, of course, but also frequently
Speaker 1: to at least two wheels to make it a little
Speaker 1: easier to push around. They require less physical effort to
Speaker 1: use than the mechanical lawnmowers that have been around for
Speaker 1: more than a century, but they also require fuel, and
Speaker 1: they also give off emissions through the burning of that fuel.
Speaker 1: Now folks have been calling out lawns more recently for
Speaker 1: lots of different reasons, including environmental and socioeconomic concerns. A
Speaker 1: lot of water is used on lawns, which often can
Speaker 1: be seen as very wasteful, and there's always stories about
Speaker 1: communities that have water restrictions due to drought, and some
Speaker 1: jerkfaces using precious water to water their lawn because for
Speaker 1: some reason that's more important than everyone else having access
Speaker 1: to water. Some folks use stuff like herbicides and pesticides
Speaker 1: in order to maintain their lawns, which can sometimes cause
Speaker 1: chemical runoff that can get washed out and join the
Speaker 1: water cycle. That's bad news. And of course there's the
Speaker 1: fact that lawns are not natural ecosystems. They represent a
Speaker 1: less biologically useful surface. And then the fact that the
Speaker 1: very concept of lawns dates back to this aristocratic notion
Speaker 1: of showing off your wealth. So might we one day
Speaker 1: see a world in which the manicured lawn is really
Speaker 1: an oddity and people move to maybe a more natural
Speaker 1: and thus disorderly approach. I don't know, but I sure
Speaker 1: hope so, because then my HOA won't be on my
Speaker 1: case if I don't get to the grass cutting on time. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that episode, that episode from just
Speaker 1: a few years ago of how medieval warfare led to
Speaker 1: the lawnmower. As I said, it's always fun for me
Speaker 1: to do those kinds of episodes where I'm looking at
Speaker 1: sort of long tail influence of how an invention comes
Speaker 1: to be. It turns out the stories about technology rarely
Speaker 1: have a very simple beginning, middle, and end. It's usually
Speaker 1: far more complicated than that, which irritates my brain because
Speaker 1: I love story structure. So the fact that reality doesn't
Speaker 1: conform to the three act structure or even five acts structure,
Speaker 1: I find incredibly vexing. But I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1: I hope you're having a great week so far, and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
Speaker 1: an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.