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 iHeartRadio and how the Tech Area. Well,
Speaker 1: I am currently on vacation, although I'll be back tomorrow Tuesday.
Speaker 1: I am flying back from New York City today, so
Speaker 1: wish me safe travels. But I didn't want to leave
Speaker 1: you without an episode, So we're going to listen to
Speaker 1: an episode that I recorded in twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 1: it was one of the episodes that really tickled me
Speaker 1: when I got to work on it. It's called How
Speaker 1: Medieval Warfare Lead to the Lawnmower, And it's kind of
Speaker 1: a silly title, but you know, it also actually does track.
Speaker 1: If it weren't for things like castles, we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: lawnmowers and weed whackers. Really, So let's sit back, listen
Speaker 1: to this episode from twenty twenty one and enjoy. While
Speaker 1: I've been recording shows from my home for nearly a
Speaker 1: year now, I still occasionally get reminded about how things
Speaker 1: can be different from when I was working in the office.
Speaker 1: For the most part, things are kind of like 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 are 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: be again with some etymology, which I am now being
Speaker 1: told is not the study of bugs, but rather the
Speaker 1: origin 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 land, meaning
Speaker 1: an unwitted field or an open space in the woods,
Speaker 1: like a glade. Thanks Miriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Now y'all
Speaker 1: might know that 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 landa 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 Lawnda. And the passage goes
Speaker 1: like this, and then a lawanda upon the Hilda of
Speaker 1: Flores was set. This Nobla Goddessa natier of branches were here,
Speaker 1: Harleis and her Borza. He wrought after haircraft and her measure.
Speaker 1: Now this passage goes on a bit longer, but honestly,
Speaker 1: I would just be indulging my own love of medieval
Speaker 1: 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 bigwig types. You know, you got your kings
Speaker 1: and your lords and your earls and whatnot. And occasionally
Speaker 1: these types would lead large groups of warriors to conquer
Speaker 1: other medieval bigwig types, something like a, Hey, those guys
Speaker 1: over there got it pretty good, so what don't we
Speaker 1: go over there and take their stuff and make it
Speaker 1: our stuff? And so the world turns upon such thoughts.
Speaker 1: But it's not enough to conquer the people who live
Speaker 1: on the other side of the hills or river or
Speaker 1: ocean or whatever. You got to hold on to the
Speaker 1: land that you've claimed, right, and that means creating fortifications,
Speaker 1: preferably in places where you can get a pretty good
Speaker 1: look at your surroundings, to make sure no other medieval
Speaker 1: big wigs get the same bright idea you got, and
Speaker 1: then they come to take your stuff, and it used
Speaker 1: to be someone else's stuff, because you know, there's always
Speaker 1: a bigger fish, as it were. So you build up
Speaker 1: your forts or your castles as it were, to protect
Speaker 1: your assets. Your castles are your defense system where you
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: half moon, you know, sort of crescent shaped, and the
Speaker 1: blade is also typically at an angle relative to the handles,
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 side 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 semicircular swings, and those swings only go in one direction.
Speaker 1: The blade is sharpened on the inside curve, not the
Speaker 1: outside curve, and you're typically going right to left because
Speaker 1: the handle for the forward hand on a scythe is
Speaker 1: meant to be held with the right hand. The left
Speaker 1: hand is meant to hold the scythe further back on
Speaker 1: the handle, so in other words, this is yet another
Speaker 1: right handed tool. Scything can actually be pretty efficient. There
Speaker 1: are actually there's some great videos on YouTube of people
Speaker 1: who have really gotten skilled with scything and they can
Speaker 1: make short work of an overgrown lawn like they can
Speaker 1: cut that stuff down quickly. I suggest you check it out.
Speaker 1: It's just neat to watch, and the angle of the
Speaker 1: blade determines how short the scythe will cut the grass.
Speaker 1: Using a scythe with a good blade angle, a skilled
Speaker 1: wheelder can cut the grass very low and pretty efficiently too,
Speaker 1: and you would have the bottom part of the blade
Speaker 1: actually making contact with the ground as you swing the
Speaker 1: scythe from right to left. They also tend to have
Speaker 1: to rake up the yard afterward to gather up all
Speaker 1: the trimmings. We're 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 need to have something to rake up
Speaker 1: all the clippings that you've left behind. I've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of videos of folks using sides in order to
Speaker 1: cut back on relying on fossil fuels and to make
Speaker 1: use of the trimmings in various ways, from compost to
Speaker 1: making hay while the sun shines. In some videos, I've
Speaker 1: seen folks use sithes more effectively than someone who is
Speaker 1: using a mechanical push mower or a weed whacker, though
Speaker 1: power mowers do tend to be more efficient than a scythe,
Speaker 1: So a push mower, like a mechanical one where there's
Speaker 1: no motor, it's just from human power that versus a scythe,
Speaker 1: you might actually see someone be more effective with the
Speaker 1: side than with the push mower weed whacker, 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 anyone ever 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 drumroll please vanity. See. While in the
Speaker 1: medieval era soldiers wanted to get a good view of
Speaker 1: what might be coming at them throughout Europe, particularly in
Speaker 1: France and England, the strategic usefulness of castles gradually declined
Speaker 1: 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 hoyity 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 toyty types doing this because maintaining a lawn was
Speaker 1: a lot of work. Not that the toy types were
Speaker 1: the ones doing the work, mind you, but they were
Speaker 1: the ones who could afford livestock or laborers who would
Speaker 1: trim back stuff for them. So from manor houses to
Speaker 1: inhabited castles you had the practice of maintaining these large
Speaker 1: grassy areas. Now, some of that sensibility would also find
Speaker 1: its way over to the New World where it really
Speaker 1: took hold. Now, the grasses in the New World were
Speaker 1: different than those found in Europe, but when settlers came
Speaker 1: to North America, they brought with them livestock, and apparently
Speaker 1: the livestock really liked the grass in America so much
Speaker 1: so that they ding dang durnate at all. So to
Speaker 1: keep the livestock from starving, the colonists were importing grass
Speaker 1: seats from Europe and North Africa, including grasses that, if
Speaker 1: you were to go by their names, sound like they
Speaker 1: 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 idea 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 helped,
Speaker 1: things for which we can largely thank the Scots. Scottish
Speaker 1: sports like golf and lawn bowling were brought over by
Speaker 1: Scottish immigrants to America and they became popular pastimes for
Speaker 1: those who had the leisure to pursue such things. But
Speaker 1: to play lawn games, you gotta cut the grass, otherwise
Speaker 1: you're going to spend more time trying to find the
Speaker 1: game equipment than you get to play with the darned things.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to come back to the evolution of
Speaker 1: the lawn, particularly in America, and just a little bit
Speaker 1: as that history ties into a lot of other interesting
Speaker 1: stuff and includes some heavy duty connections to other elements
Speaker 1: of American society in addition to feeding an entire industry
Speaker 1: dedicated to lawn care and maintenance. But let's get back
Speaker 1: to our early history of lawn mowers. Okay, so by
Speaker 1: 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: certain couldn't do so to the immaculate standards of the aristocracy.
Speaker 1: The wealthy would spend a lot to get that perfect lawn,
Speaker 1: even going so far as to hire people to use
Speaker 1: handheld shears to cut grass down quite low, and to
Speaker 1: avoid the patterns that you would see if he 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. Budding
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: the whole working class versus posh and all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. So He started off in carpentry, but he
Speaker 1: switched over to working at iron foundries. The Industrial Revolution
Speaker 1: was well underweigh in England at this point and the
Speaker 1: demand for iron tools and machinery was very high, and
Speaker 1: through experience Budding built up an understanding of engineering and
Speaker 1: problem solving. He would end up inventing several things or
Speaker 1: making his own version of some existing machines, but obviously
Speaker 1: the one we want to really look at is the lawnmower.
Speaker 1: Budding got the idea for the lawnmower when he saw
Speaker 1: a device used by textile mills to trim back the
Speaker 1: fibers that stick out from the surface of cloth, also
Speaker 1: known as the nap of a cloth, and with some
Speaker 1: textiles the goal is to fluff the nap out. You
Speaker 1: use little combs or prickly flowers even to pull some
Speaker 1: of those threads out, and then you comb it a
Speaker 1: certain way, which can make the cloth softer to the
Speaker 1: touch and better at doing stuff like trapping heat. But
Speaker 1: sometimes you just wanted a very smooth piece of cloth,
Speaker 1: something that wouldn't get caught easily on roughs. So, for example,
Speaker 1: you might want a carpet that could withstand more use
Speaker 1: as long as it didn't you catch on shoes and stuff,
Speaker 1: So you would want to shear the nap. You'd want
Speaker 1: to cut that nap close to the cloth. And in
Speaker 1: earlier days this job was done by skilled tradespeople who
Speaker 1: would use giant sets of shears. I mean, these things
Speaker 1: were massive in order to cut the nap off the
Speaker 1: surface of the cloth as efficiently as possible. But by
Speaker 1: Butting's time, some genius whose name is lost to history
Speaker 1: came up with the notion of building a mechanical device
Speaker 1: that has blades arranged around a drum or cylinder in
Speaker 1: a type of helix shape. The drum or cylinder rotates,
Speaker 1: and by running the surface of the cloth near this
Speaker 1: helix of blades, the blades could trim back the nap
Speaker 1: on the surface of the cloth. Add in some rollers
Speaker 1: and some other elements to pull the cloth along, and
Speaker 1: you've got yourself a machine that can trim the nap
Speaker 1: back on cloth evenly, consistently, and efficiently. Aha, said Budding.
Speaker 1: What if I took that same basic idea and flipped
Speaker 1: it around a bit, so you could trim back grass
Speaker 1: with rotating blades along a cylinder, And in eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: that's just what he did, securing a patent number six
Speaker 1: zero eight one in fact for his invention. I'll explain
Speaker 1: more about it after this quick break. Budding saw an
Speaker 1: opportunity to create a device that could consistently and reliably
Speaker 1: cut grass a specific length. So, in other words, you
Speaker 1: could adjust how tall the grass would be and without
Speaker 1: leaving those marks behind that you would get if you
Speaker 1: were to cut grass with scythes and such. Also, the
Speaker 1: lawnmower wouldn't poop on the lawn, unlike livestock. It would
Speaker 1: be particularly handy for parks and sporting grounds where the
Speaker 1: to do could gather for their leisure time and look
Speaker 1: for something orderly and neat, which very much fit in
Speaker 1: with the sensibilities of the elite of nineteenth century Britain.
Speaker 1: So Edwin Beard Budding built a wheeled machine out of
Speaker 1: rot 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 rotatble 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 button's 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 round, and
Speaker 1: it transfers that rotational motion to the cylinder or the
Speaker 1: dram 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, Budding 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 Budding said his
Speaker 1: invention represented to quote, a new combination an application of
Speaker 1: machinery for the purpose of cropping or shearing the vegetable
Speaker 1: surfaces of lawns, grass plats and pleasure grounds. Country gentlemen
Speaker 1: may find and using my machine themselves, and amusing useful
Speaker 1: and healthy exercise end quote. It's interesting to note that
Speaker 1: a lot of the basic designs introduced by Budding would
Speaker 1: stick around throughout the ages with mechanical pushmowers, and the
Speaker 1: ones that we have today have at least some resemblance
Speaker 1: to the one that Budding was making back in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century. Now the new ones are more elegant
Speaker 1: in design and they're made of much lighter materials, but
Speaker 1: the general principle behind the operation remains pretty much the same.
Speaker 1: Budding formed a partnership with an engineer named John Farrabee,
Speaker 1: who owned a company called Phoenix Iron Works. Farreby had
Speaker 1: the manufacturing rights to produce Budding's design and fronted the
Speaker 1: costs to develop the prototype. One of the earliest lawnmowers
Speaker 1: that the pair produced 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 Faraby's capacity.
Speaker 1: To produce lawnmowers, and Faraby 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: 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 toward 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, Farrabe's Ironworks had produced around five
Speaker 1: thousand lawnmowers, and that included a small range of designs,
Speaker 1: which mainly had to do with the width of the lawnmower.
Speaker 1: A wider lawnmower can obviously cut a wider strip of grass,
Speaker 1: which means you don't have to do as many passes
Speaker 1: on a lawn or a field in order to complete
Speaker 1: a job, but it also means that the lawnmower gets heavier.
Speaker 1: Some of the designs incorporated a second handle on the lawnmower.
Speaker 1: This one would be toward the front of the machine,
Speaker 1: which meant you could actually pull it along behind you
Speaker 1: instead of pushing it in front of you. One design
Speaker 1: I saw had the handle on a hinge so you
Speaker 1: could swing the handle so you could swing it toward
Speaker 1: the rear of the machine and make it a push mower,
Speaker 1: or you could swing it to the front of the
Speaker 1: machine and make it a pull mower. Budding's design inspired
Speaker 1: others to make their own adjustments. In eighteen forty two,
Speaker 1: Alexander Shanks, an inventor from Scotland, made a version of
Speaker 1: the lawnmower that could be hitched to a horse or pony,
Speaker 1: which allowed him to make even larger lawnmowers that would
Speaker 1: be far too heavy for a person to push or
Speaker 1: pull on their own. To prevent the horses from damaging
Speaker 1: the grass. Let's say that you were cutting the grass
Speaker 1: on a golf course, something that was very common in
Speaker 1: Scotland or tennis courts. Well, they would put little leather
Speaker 1: shoes on the horse's hoofs, so the horse would be
Speaker 1: wearing booties in order to mow the lawn. In the
Speaker 1: eighteen fifties, inventor Thomas Greene made some adjustments of his
Speaker 1: own to the lawnmower design, and one simple tweak was
Speaker 1: that he added a rake to help lift grass blades
Speaker 1: up a little bit for cutting, so that way you
Speaker 1: didn't end up with any mist bits. But in the
Speaker 1: late eighteen fifties he made a much more substantial change.
Speaker 1: He created a chain drive for the mower's blades instead
Speaker 1: of the gear drive that Budding had created, and by
Speaker 1: removing the need for so many cast iron gears and
Speaker 1: replacing them with a chain, he made the lawnmowers design
Speaker 1: simpler and importantly lighter. It was also apparently less noisy,
Speaker 1: as green called his lawnmower the Silen's Messoar for silent running.
Speaker 1: By this time, thirty years after the invention of the lawnmower,
Speaker 1: word had reached America. In eighteen sixty eight, an inventor
Speaker 1: from Connecticut named Amariah Hills received a patent for improvements
Speaker 1: to Budding's lawnmower design, which included changing out a cylinder
Speaker 1: covered in blades to an open spiral cutter. So just
Speaker 1: imagine a helix of blades, but you no longer have
Speaker 1: them mounted on a cylinder. It's almost like it's just
Speaker 1: two blades that mount two wheels on either side that
Speaker 1: can turn. He also allowed more fine tuning for the
Speaker 1: cutting height and changed how the handle attached to the
Speaker 1: frame of the mower, and his design would go on
Speaker 1: to become a very popular mower in the Northeastern United States,
Speaker 1: sometimes called an archimedian mower because the blades resembled the
Speaker 1: classic archimedian screw. Many of these machines saw use in
Speaker 1: parks and for maintaining stuff like golf courses and tennis
Speaker 1: courts and the like. But over in America they would
Speaker 1: also 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 Amariah
Speaker 1: Hill as it represented a demand for those Archimedean mowers.
Speaker 1: And in eighteen seventy Frank J. Scotts, The Art of
Speaker 1: Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds of Small Extent hit the presses.
Speaker 1: This book, which is six hundred eighteen pages in length
Speaker 1: if we don't include all the advertisements at the end
Speaker 1: of the book, goes to what I can only describe
Speaker 1: as excruciating detail regarding how to make your lawn look
Speaker 1: absolutely magnificent and further, you are a monster if you
Speaker 1: don't do it. You can read the whole thing over
Speaker 1: on the Smithsonian Library's website if you would like. If
Speaker 1: you want to skip to the juicy stuff, go to
Speaker 1: page one hundred seven, chapter thirteen, The Lawn. The chapter
Speaker 1: opens up with a couple of references to poetry, followed
Speaker 1: by this passage quote, A smooth, closely shoven surface of
Speaker 1: grass is by far the most essential element of beauty
Speaker 1: 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 esthetic 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 we'll 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 eighteen ninety or so, inventors
Speaker 1: began to 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: It 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 asses 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 got to fill up the
Speaker 1: boiler from time to time. You got to keep that
Speaker 1: furnace going and keep it really hot. And you know,
Speaker 1: you just gotta not explode, which is something that can
Speaker 1: happen if pressure builds up in a boiler and the
Speaker 1: steam has nowhere to go. But hey, a boiler explosion
Speaker 1: is a small price to pay for a well manicured lawn. Right. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm clearly getting snarky again, But these lawnmowers did work,
Speaker 1: and I've seen some that look like the 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 oop 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've 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 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: flat landscaped park, or you know, a sporting area like
Speaker 1: a golf course or maybe a tennis court. They also
Speaker 1: didn't stick around for very long. And when we come back,
Speaker 1: I'll talk about the development of the gas powered lawnmower,
Speaker 1: which would take the steam out of its predecessor for
Speaker 1: a couple of good reasons. But first let's take another
Speaker 1: quick break. Before I get into more modern mowers, I
Speaker 1: should mention another inventor, this one named John Albert Burr.
Speaker 1: He made change us to the classic cylindrical lawnmower design
Speaker 1: so that the gears wouldn't easily get gummed up with
Speaker 1: lawn clippings. Essentially, they figured out, hey, if we cover
Speaker 1: these gears up so that the lawn clippings can't get
Speaker 1: in the gearworks, then you're not going to have as
Speaker 1: many jams as you try and mow your lawn. He
Speaker 1: also created a mower that would allow landscapers to mow
Speaker 1: more closely to the edge of walls and buildings to
Speaker 1: get a neater cut. Also, around this time, improvements in
Speaker 1: manufacturing meant that companies could mass produce lawn mowers, 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 two 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 pushmower.
Speaker 1: This was a gigantic monstrosity. In fact, the images I've
Speaker 1: seen of this thing make it look like there's a
Speaker 1: gentleman in a jacket and tweed hat who is taking
Speaker 1: a printing press out for a ride or something. It's
Speaker 1: a machine with big, heavy chains, enormous rollers, a large
Speaker 1: container in front to catch clippings, and whirling blades of
Speaker 1: destruction underneath. It looks pretty awesome, I think, and almost unreal.
Speaker 1: It 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 and work and other episodes,
Speaker 1: so 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 design that Budding had proposed way back
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty. So these were not the rotary mowers
Speaker 1: that we would see much later, not yet, but the
Speaker 1: advances in internal combustion engines, which would both make the
Speaker 1: mowers get smaller and more powerful as various engineers made
Speaker 1: improvements to the engines that eventually did lead to the
Speaker 1: design of a different kind of lawnmowers. So instead of
Speaker 1: that horizontal axis cylindrical approach in which the blades would
Speaker 1: rotate around that horizontal axis, the internal combustion engineal out
Speaker 1: for a lawnmower with a vertical axle upon which you
Speaker 1: would fix a horizontal blade, So the rotating vertical axle
Speaker 1: would rotate this horizontal blade close to the ground in
Speaker 1: a really fast circle, and you've got your rotary lawnmower.
Speaker 1: A lot of different engineers and companies experimented with creating
Speaker 1: rotary lawnmowers for a few decades actually, but most of
Speaker 1: them weren't really that successful because the engines being used
Speaker 1: just weren't up to turning something that way in an
Speaker 1: efficient manner, so you couldn't cut very well with them.
Speaker 1: But by the nineteen fifties it had become a viable
Speaker 1: approach to lawnmower design. And now we're going to get
Speaker 1: into some interesting and some upsetting parts of history. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we laid out how the aristocracy used lawns as
Speaker 1: a way to show off their wealth and their sensibilities,
Speaker 1: and we talked about how those ideas filtered from France
Speaker 1: and England to America, and how Frank Scott promoted them
Speaker 1: with his authoritative approach on appealing to wealthy suburban families.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some big issues in the United States.
Speaker 1: They made lawns a sort of symbol of the halves
Speaker 1: versus the half knots. And this is also going to
Speaker 1: have a lot to do about racial discrimination. Back in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy when Scott's book hit the scene, his target
Speaker 1: demographic was the white suburban homeowner. The suburbs were where
Speaker 1: you typically find the upper middle class, or maybe the
Speaker 1: lower upper classes, and these communities were predominantly white, and
Speaker 1: frequently that was actually a selling point that real estate
Speaker 1: agents would market to potential clients. It was, without a doubt,
Speaker 1: a racist perspective, the idea that a community is preferable
Speaker 1: because there are no people of color living there. That's
Speaker 1: just gross, all right. So flash forward to the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1: The United States enters World War Two and sends more
Speaker 1: than sixteen million Americans to serve. During the war, more
Speaker 1: than four hundred thousand of those Americans died in action,
Speaker 1: and another six hundred seventy thousand were wounded. At the time,
Speaker 1: racial segregation was still very much in practice. Even in
Speaker 1: the military, and the number of black people serving in
Speaker 1: the US military actually represented a lower percentage than the
Speaker 1: demographics of black people relatives to the general US population
Speaker 1: at the time, but there were still thousands of black
Speaker 1: soldiers and volunteers who were active in the theater of war,
Speaker 1: including soldiers on the front lines. Back home, the United
Speaker 1: States government passed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: better known as the GI Bill. The purpose of the
Speaker 1: bill was to create a support system for soldiers returning
Speaker 1: home that included important infrastructure like the construction of hospitals.
Speaker 1: But it also included the chance to go to college
Speaker 1: tuition free up to five hundred dollars, which, hey, how
Speaker 1: about those college tuition increases, y'all. They could also secure
Speaker 1: low interest mortgage offers on homes through banks. 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 two
Speaker 1: era saw an economic boom, and along with developments like
Speaker 1: color printing, radio television, we also saw a boom in advertising.
Speaker 1: And you better believe companies that were making lawn care
Speaker 1: products and machinery, including lawnmowers, were leaning heavily on promoting
Speaker 1: the idea that a neat, orderly lawn reflects well on
Speaker 1: homeowners and that the products they were selling would help
Speaker 1: you achieve that dream of homogeneous perfection that plays a
Speaker 1: pardon it too. The US in the nineteen fifties was
Speaker 1: an era of conformity. There was an intense pressure to
Speaker 1: create the ideal of perfection. Honestly, when we look at
Speaker 1: stuff like how people will manufacture these perfect photos for
Speaker 1: their social media platforms like their Instagram, to me, it
Speaker 1: feels like it's that same mentality coming back into play. 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 chord, the pull that can foil
Speaker 1: us as we try to get that little bit of
Speaker 1: fuel that's been pumped into the engine to catch on
Speaker 1: before giving that chord a big rip or 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 chord wound around that reel.
Speaker 1: The end of that chord is attached to a handle
Speaker 1: that's on the outside the lawnmower. That's the part that
Speaker 1: you grip and pull. Attached to the reel inside the
Speaker 1: lawnmower is a spring. So pulling the cord will cause
Speaker 1: the spring to extend and it wants to contract. So
Speaker 1: that's the force you're feeling. The tension you feel is
Speaker 1: the spring trying to contract again. So when you let
Speaker 1: go of the chord, it goes back into the you know,
Speaker 1: the lawnmower because that spring is compressing well. Also attached
Speaker 1: to the reel is the clutch of the engine, and
Speaker 1: as the reel 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 lawnmower typically uses the engine to provide
Speaker 1: power to the blade, of course, but also frequently to
Speaker 1: at least two wheels to make it a little easier
Speaker 1: to push around. They require less physical effort to use
Speaker 1: than the mechanical lawnmowers that have been around for more
Speaker 1: than a century, but they also require fuel, and they
Speaker 1: also give off emissions through the learning of that fuel.
Speaker 1: Now some folks have been calling out lawns more recently
Speaker 1: for lots of different reasons, including environmental and socioeconomic concerns.
Speaker 1: A lot of water is used on lawns, which often
Speaker 1: can be seen as very wasteful, and there's always stories
Speaker 1: about communities that have water restrictions due to drought, and
Speaker 1: some jerk faces using precious water to water their lawn
Speaker 1: because for some reason that's more important than everyone else
Speaker 1: having access to water. Some folks use stuff like herbicides
Speaker 1: and pesticides in order to maintain their lawns, which can
Speaker 1: sometimes cause chemical runoff that can get washed out and
Speaker 1: join the water cycle. That's bad news. And of course
Speaker 1: there's the fact that lawns are not natural ecosystems. They
Speaker 1: represent a less biologically useful surface. And then the fact
Speaker 1: that the very concept of lawns dates back to this
Speaker 1: aristocratic notion of showing off your wealth. So might we
Speaker 1: one day see a world in which the manicured law
Speaker 1: on is really an oddity and people move to maybe
Speaker 1: a more natural and thus disorderly approach. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I sure hope so, because then my h O
Speaker 1: won't be on my case if I don't get to
Speaker 1: the grass cutting on time. I hope you enjoyed that
Speaker 1: episode from twenty twenty one. It originally published on February fifteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. That's my work anniversary. I started working
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works on February fifteenth, many many years ago,
Speaker 1: and I'm still here. I hope that you are all well.
Speaker 1: I will be back for the rest of the week,
Speaker 1: so I look forward to chatting with you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.