"Country gentlemen may find in using my machine themselves an amusing, useful and healthy exercise"
- Edwin Beard Budding, inventor of the lawnmower, 1830

In the early 18th Century, when pre-revolutionary France was being ruled by a succession of camp poreclain-faced bewigged dandies called Louis, there arose a desire for homes to be enhanced with ornamental gardens, specifically including areas of ground dressed with short and tended to grass, nowadays "lawns". Apart from the fairly haphazard efforts of sheep, goats, and the occasional ornamental antelope, grass was usually hand-trimmed using scythe, sickle, or shears¹. However, notwithstanding the sheer back-breaking intensity of labour necessary to keep a lawn shipshape and Bristol-fashion, such efforts could easily result in an untidy 'pulled-through-a-hedge-backwards' thatch. Indeed, for tiptop results, the task had to be performed either early in the morning or late at night, when the ground would have been wet with dew.

Thus, necessity being the mother of invention, one Edwin Beard Budding (1795-1846) from Stroud, Gloucestershire, England set about inventing the lawnmower, and a patent was granted to him for a "Machine for mowing lawns" on 31 August 1830². Based upon a carding machine, a cutting-tool used for trimming the nap of fabric in the textile-industry, Budding's mower was what is now known as a cylinder (or reel) type lawnmower, wherein a series of blades are arranged around and along a cylinder, whose axis lies parallel to the plane of the lawn. Rotation of the cylinder entraps the (confusingly) blades of grass between the blades that are attached to the cylinder and a single non-moving bed-knife, cutting the grass as does a pair of scissors. Budding's original lawnmower design comprised a rear roller with a cutting cylinder set in front, driven via gearing by rotation of the rear roller. Although crude and unwieldy, often requiring two operators, Budding subsequently entered into agreement with one John Ferrabee, the proprietor of the Phoenix Foundry at Thrupp Mill, Stroud, in order to produce the mower commercially.

Non-human endeavour was subsequently favoured by William Fullerton Lindsey Carnegie of Kimblethmont Estate, Boysack, Scotland who, in 1841, had a pony-drawn 27" swath cylinder lawnmower assembled by legendary mower manufacturer Alexander Shanks of nearby Arbroath, and within a year, the pair registered a patent for a horse-drawn 42" swath cylinder lawnmower. Notably, draught-horses used to haul mowers across lawns were provided with leather booties to prevent the shoe from leaving an impression in the turf.

Throughout the 19^th Century, manufacturers and inventors competed tirelessly to perfect the manual mower, Shanks of Arbroath, Greens of Leeds, Samuelson of Banbury, Ransomes of Ipswich and Ferrabee of Stroud being the main movers and shakers of the time. But it seems in retrospect that something of a crescendo was reached in 1869 when a pair of mowers called Follows and Bates entered the fray, coming onto the market with their Climax. In a departure from the variations on Budding's orignal theme, the Climax was fitted with a pair of land-wheels (instead of the previously favoured roller) placed outside of the cylinder. With less parts, the machine was much lighter, and thus cheaper, than its counterparts and as such met with orgasmic success, selling 4,000 models in the first two years of production.

Nevertheless, the age of steam revolutionised lawnmowing technology when in 1893 James Sumner of Leyland, Lancashire, England built a steam-powered mower, a beast that tipped the scales at around two tonnes. Trials of the Sumner mower were held at Lords Cricket Ground, London, England.

Mechanisation of the lawnmower again leapt forward in 1902 when produced the first commercially available mower powered by an internal combustion gasoline engine, having been tried and tested as a prototype in 1896 by W.J. Stephenson-Peach of the United States of America.

Indeed, it was the internal combustion engine that facilitated practical use of the rotary mower, a machine in which the blades rotate about a vertical axis, like the rotor-blades of a helicopter, shattering the grass stems instead of cutting them. Invented by Leonard Goodall in 1940, the rotary mower needs an engine to provide the power to spin the rotary blade fast enough to cut the turf effectively.