31st August: Lawn mowers

The first lawn mower was invented by Edwin Budding in 1830 in Thrupp, Gloucestershire, England. Budding's mower was granted a British patent on August 31, 1830. If you have a garden, in this great British summer we're having as I write this, you've probably been using the lawn mower a lot - so here are ten facts about them:

1. Before Edwin Budding came along, a large, neat Lawn was out of reach of anyone of modest means. You would need either a flock of sheep to nibble at it (which is what US President Woodrow Wilson did. He kept a flock of sheep to trim the White House lawn, and as a sideline, sold their wool in aid of the Red Cross), or an army of gardeners using made to measure scythes.
2. Budding was inspired by watching a cutting cylinder at a cloth mill. He worked out that the same design could be used to cut grass. However, not everyone thought it was such a brilliant idea at first. So many people laughed at him that he'd test his invention at night when nobody was watching.
3. In 1893, another Englishman, James Sumner, patented the steam powered lawnmower, although these had their drawbacks. It would take a few hours for them to warm up sufficiently to get enough pressure.
4. Another solution was the Horse drawn lawnmower. The downside of this was that you'd get hoofprints all over your lawn, so the horses had to wear leather boots.
5. The average American spends, on average, 4 hours per week taking care of their lawn.
6. About 68,000 of them are injured while doing so every year. This might be because they didn't wear the right footwear, or because a lawnmower can pick up stones or other items on the lawn and propel them at high speeds.
7. Running a petrol driven lawn mower for an hour causes as much pollution as driving a car for 200 miles. On the plus side, a 50 foot square lawn produces enough Oxygen daily to allow one person to breathe for a day.
8. Lawnmowers in film: The Lawnmower Man was a 1992 film about a scientist who is working on mind-enhancing drugs and tests them out on the man who mows the lawn, who becomes a genius. The original story was written by Stephen King. The Straight Story is a David Lynch film based on a true story about a 73 year old farmer who drives his lawnmower from Iowa to Wisconsin to make up with his estranged brother - and then back again.
9. Lawnmower racing is a thing. There's even a British Lawnmower Racing Association which claims to offer the cheapest form of motorsport in the UK.
10. There is a museum dedicated to lawnmowers in Southport, Merseyside. Its exhibits include lawnmowers that used to belong to famous people, including Prince Charles, Princess Diana, Nicholas Parsons, Alan Titchmarsh, Vanessa Feltz, Brian May, Roger McGough, and executioner Albert Pierrepoint. You won't find Philip Larkin's lawnmower in there, though. That one is in the archives of the University of Hull.

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