History of Reel mowers

[StephenTucker]

THE idea of lawn care probably started with sheep. As we started carving out backyards and suburbs, the desire for beautiful lawns and gardens spread from the landed gentry to the rest of us. Early governors in the colonies had no way to keep the grass short other than on the hoof.
Mechanical mowing came about early in the 19th century. The first patent for a “Machine for mowing lawns, etc” was granted to Edwin Beard Budding (1795-1846) from Stroud,
Gloucestershire, on August 31, 1830. Budding entered into an agreement with John Ferrabee, owner of Phoenix Foundry at Thrupp Mill, Stroud, to produce the mower.
It was a series of blades arranged around a cylinder with a push handle patterned after a machine used for shearing the nap on velvet in a cloth factory. The reel or cylinder mower, as it is called in England, shears grass in the same way a pair of scissors works. The cutting blades are riveted or welded to a series of “spiders”, located on a central shaft. As the shaft turns the blades come in contact with the stationary bed knife to cut the blades of grass. It does not chew it the way sheep do; it does not rip it the way a scythe does; and it does not shatter it the way a rotary mower does.

With the invention of the reel lawn mower, instead of spending many hours using a scythe, sickle, or shears to get an unevenly cut lawn you could now simply and comfortably push a “reel lawn mower”.
Alexander Shanks of Arbroath built the first non-human-powered reel lawn mower, for William Fullerton Lindsey Carnegie of Kimblethmont Estate, Boysack, Scotland. In 1841 Shanks built a 27-inch pony-drawn reel lawn mower, and the following year registered a 42-inch horse-drawn mower. The human would have to walk alongside the horse, hence the expression for walking “to go by Shanks’ Pony”.
The entry of the horse, wearing oversize leather booties to prevent lawn damage and drawing a wide reel mower, allowed vast estate lawns and playing fields to be more quickly and Cheaply cut. The sheep were displaced from the job of keeping the golf course fairway short.

British-manufactured reel lawn mowers were exported for many years before the first US patent for a reel lawn mower was granted to Amariah Hills on January 12, 1868.
In 1870, Elwood McGuire of Richmond, Indiana designed a machine that brought push mowing to the masses. By 1885, the US was building 50,000 lawnmowers a year and shipping them everywhere.
James Sumner of Leyden, Lancaster, England built the first motorised mower. This two-ton steam-powered giant cut a 40 inch swath. In 1902 Ransomes produced the first commercially available mower powered by an internal com*bustion engine.
As Australia moved into the 20th century, walk-behind reel mowers were responsible for keeping neighbourhoods of the 20s, 30s and 40s shorn. During the post-war boom era, our neighbourhoods turned into sprawling suburbs, and the introduction of the petrol and electric powered lawnmower gave rise to a new era of lawn care.
Between 1953 and 1959 the power rotary mower that we recognise today began to outsell the reel mower by a ratio of nine to one. The rotary mower was designed with a single rotating blade under a cutting deck,

With the arrival of the motor mower, power and speed had arrived on the lawn. Big and expensive soon became small and cheap. Thus even larger areas of grass could be clipped.
Even though its popularity dropped precipitously after the Second World War, the reel lawn mower has been here all along. Thousands of hand or push mowers are being made with the number increasing yearly as more home owners seek to return to a quieter method of cutting the grass on smaller plots in the suburbs.
There has yet to be invented a more effective system of cutting grass, especially at such short heights as those found on a golf course. Hydraulics and electronics are state of the grass cutting art, but the reel and bed knife have remained unchanged for 170 years.

[PatrickCallaby]

Very interesting to have a potted history available, thanks Stephen.

[JohnTutchen]

A lot more info and good pics at the site for the Worlds Largest Collection of Vintage Lawnmowers -

http://www.hdtrust.co.uk/

The Hall & Duck Trust is in England.
I posted this link on Turftech a while ago as well.