Reel Mower History

Reel mower history dates back hundreds of years. Prior to the early 1800s, a home’s lawn maintenance fell largely to grazing animals or the manual use of scythes, swing blades and gardening sheers. For people with the time and inclination to manicure their lawns, this worked just fine. But the 19th-century world was experiencing rapid change. Europe was riding the wave of technological achievements and discoveries, known today as the Industrial Revolution.

Inventors throughout the 1800s made huge strides, from developing steam power to manufacturing machine parts. Inventors aimed their efforts at improving vital production processes such as coal mining, textile production and transportation. New technologies, however, always have a way of trickling down to even the most mundane uses.

British engineer Edwin Beard Budding made just such a connection between new technology and daily life. He observed a machine at a local textile mill that trimmed cloth with a bladed reel or cutting cylinder. Envisioning the possibilities of applying the technology toward lawn maintenance, he teamed up with engineer John Ferrabee. Together, they produced the world’s first lawn mower in 1830.

The two engineers simply took the bladed reel, mounted it on a wheeled cart and arranged a system of gears to transfer wheel rotation to reel rotation. The mowers were heavy, cast-iron devices, but after Budding and Ferrabee’s patents expired, other inventors began improving on the design. These new reel mowers were lighter and required less effort to push. Some inventors even replaced the gears with drive chains, like those on bicycles.

During the 1890s, other inventors attempted to add a power source to reel mowers. They tried both horsepower and steam power before small-engine technology advanced enough to become the standard. Today, most of the gas mowers used for home lawns are rotary mowers, which employ a horizontal, fan-shaped blade. While gas-powered reel mowers are still around, many of them are large, tractor-powered vehicles intended for the upkeep of sports fields and farms.

In the United States, the first gasoline powered mowers were manufactured in 1919 by Colonel Edwin George (you had to guess that it would take a military man to get some real power behind those whirling blades). However, before the World War II the power mower was little used in most neighborhoods. It wasn’t because husbands didn’t want to have one of those new powered mowing machines, it was because we were in the midst of a slight depression in the economy and it was kind of hard to explain to the wife that you’d like to buy a power lawn mower instead of buying food for the family for the next 12 months.

During World War II, when most able-bodied men were off fighting the war, women were left at home to take care of the yard themselves along with cooking, shopping, cleaning, and oh yes, all that working in the factories business. I think that was the real secret to the power lawn mower boom that followed the war. When the fighting men came home, they didn’t want to mess around with cutting grass with an old push mower. After all they had been out driving about the world in tanks and jeeps, and bombers and such. The idea that now they were relegated to pushing an old 19th Century lawn mower around the backyard, just didn’t quite cut it with the GIs. Not being shy about such things, they told their wives that they weren’t going to cut the grass anymore, after all, it was woman’s work. Women in mass stood up and in a quiet revolt pointed their respective husbands towards hardware stores across American in search of the power mower. Things haven’t been the same since.

Today, new technology is bringing us improved mower versions. Low emission gasoline engines with catalytic converters are being manufactured to help reduce air pollution. Improved muffling devices are also being installed to reduce the noise pollution. Battery powered mowers are also becoming practical. Although slightly smaller with an average cutting swath of only 17″ - 19″, these new mowers will quietly cut lawns without the common cloud of blue smoke hanging in the air, for about an hour per charge. Prices are comparable to a high-end gasoline powered mower.

While gas- and electric-powered mowers have continued to evolve over the decades, the manual reel mower’s basic design has remained the same.