The Ingenuity Behind the Invention of the Lawn Mower

Machinist E.W. McGuire created the first push lawn mower in 1874, making a more economical, user-friendly cutter that is now ubiquitous.

Elwood McGuire organized a choreographed lawn mower presentation at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Wayne County Historical Museum

Summer is prime time for lawn mowing and the unmistakable scent of fresh-cut grass. For those using push mowers, you can thank Elwood McGuire for the fact you don’t require sheep to manage your lawn-maintenance needs.

McGuire was a 19th-century Indiana machinist credited with developing the first push mower in 1874. McGuire’s reel mower was redesigned from a fodder cutter invented by Englishman Edwin Beard Budding 40 years earlier.

Prior to McGuire’s redesigned reel cutter and Budding’s fodder cutter, the only way to cut grass was with a scythe, sickle, or grazing animals.

McGuire saw his first fodder cutter in 1870 when a local farmer brought one in to have the blades sharpened. By 1874, the Dille and McGuire Manufacturing Company in Richmond, Indiana, began mass production of a downsized, pushable reel mower. This was nearly three decades before Henry Ford’s first Model T rolled off Detroit assembly lines. McGuire’s push mower did for America’s lawns what Ford’s Model T did for American transportation.

A savvy marketer, Elwood McGuire mowed local town squares and village greens to demonstrate and promote his invention. Wayne County Historical Museum

Reinventing the Reel Mower Wheel

When McGuire studied the fodder cutter brought to him for sharpening, this is what he saw: a reel mower with a wrought-iron frame and cast-iron gear wheels that made the device heavy, awkward, and expensive to produce. The early reel mowers were horse-drawn and their primary purpose was to cut grass on sports grounds and around palatial gardens.

McGuire saw a way to make a reel mower people-friendly and workable for smaller spaces. He envisioned a cutting tool that would have a lighter frame for ease of handling, would require fewer moving parts, and would be cheaper to make. After working on a prototype, his finished product weighed just 40 pounds, produced a 12-inch swath and sold for just $12. That price point was cheap enough to make the mowers affordable for the masses, but first he had to make the public aware of his human-powered push mower.

Fortunately, McGuire was as savvy with marketing as he was with machining.

McGuire’s original patent in 1880. Wayne County Historical Museum

Wayne County Historical Museum

Multiplying Sales

McGuire’s initial promotion efforts were simple and straightforward. He began mowing local town squares or village greens, and crowds would gather to watch. It didn’t take locals long to ask if they could try the mower themselves. Word of this new grass-cutting marvel quickly spread throughout eastern Indiana and western Ohio. Soon after, orders began pouring in, and McGuire received his patent in 1875.

The Indiana entrepreneur assembled a national sales team and dispatched them around the country to demonstrate the mower’s cutting prowess.

McGuire knew that tall grass wasn’t exclusive to America. He assembled an international sales team to further increase sales. Soon, citizens from different continents were using his reel mower. By 1885, America was building 50,000 mowers a year, with most of them being built by Dille and McGuire or by one of the nine other lawn mower manufacturers that had sprung up like crabgrass in Richmond.

Richmond was nicknamed Quaker City and Rose City, but the city’s profligate lawn mower production earned the city a new moniker: “Lawnmower Capital of the World.”

Seemingly, a company booming in sales would be profitable, but when McGuire bought out his partner Henry Dille in 1890, the company was deeply in debt. McGuire retained the company’s original name but knew he needed a strategy to stand out from his competition. Three years later, he found his solution in Chicago.

A diagram of McGuire’s ball-bearing lawn mower. Henry Ford Museum

A World-Class Grass Cutting Demonstration

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World’s Fair, renowned for introducing a number of innovations or products still in use or in production today: Welch’s Grape Juice, the Ferris Wheel, and clothing zippers, to name just a few. McGuire knew that he could reach hundreds of thousands of potential customers by demonstrating how easy it could be to maintain their own yards.

McGuire developed a clever pitch to the board of directors. He offered his lawn cutting services for free in exchange for permission to do live demonstrations. Many fairgoers had never seen a lawnmower before, and McGuire sought to capitalize on their curiosity by organizing a choreographed lawnmower presentation involving dozens of men cutting grass simultaneously.

Over 27 million people attended the World’s Fair between May 1 and Oct. 30 of that year, and McGuire’s marketing stunt helped show hundreds of thousands of people how easy it was to bring cutting edge lawn care to their property. Dille and McGuire Manufacturing was soon profitable again; its owner became a millionaire. In 1901, he built a stately mansion in Richmond which still stands today. McGuire remained active in the business until 1912, when he passed control over to his son Charles.

Prior to the invention of the reel cutter or fodder cutter, the only way to cut grass was with a scythe, a sickle, or grazing animals. Public Domain

McGuire’s technical prowess and flair for marketing helped solidify Richmond’s reputation as the mecca of lawn mower production for decades. From the 1920s through the 1940s, the city’s manufacturers produced two-thirds of the world’s lawnmowers, according to Richmond’s Wayne County Historical Society.

Who would guess that a farmer wanting the blades sharpened on his British-made fodder cutter would result in a local entrepreneur burnishing himself and his city in blades of glory.

This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.