Hi to All,
From the Powerhouse Museum I have just learned that:
While the Victa rotary lawn-mower was not the first of its kind, the light weight and ease of manufacture were innovative. A British patent for a rotary lawn-mower exists from 1929, and Lawrence Hall built a rotary lawn-mower in Sydney in 1948.
Lawrence Hall, a boat engine builder, invented a rotary blade lawn-mower to cut his parents lawn in 1948. His 'Mowhall' had blades mounted onto a plough disc and used a kerosene tin as the petrol tank, a boat motor and a tubular steel frame. It was so heavy that his son and nephew had to pull it with a rope as well as push it across the lawn.
Mervyn Victor Richardson saw Hall's mower demonstrated in a park in Concord, Sydney and forgot about it. Four years later, he made some cylinder type mowers for his son's part time lawn-mowing business.
And courtesy of the Collections Australia Network:
The story behind Lawrence Hall�s �Mowhall� mower and Mervyn Richardson�s �Victa�
Lawrence Hall was a self-taught inventor who went on to become a Marine Engineer. In 1948, tired pushing a lawnmower around his mother�s lawn and around the grounds of the Cabarita Speedboat Club he set about finding an easier way to get the job done.
Using his engineering knowledge he set about building a motorised lawnmower. Using a disc from a plough, tin cans and steel pipe scraps he constructed a prototype powered by another of Hall�s inventions, a three-horsepower marine engine. In 1993 the Sydney Morning Herald interviewed his son Walter who claimed that �It was a heavy old monster and I nearly cut my foot off with it.�
But Walter also claims that this prototype of Hall�s �Mowhall� mower, was used before Mervyn Victor Richardson�s �Victa� mower was ever built. Richardson, who went on to be credited by most people for inventing Australia�s first petrol-engine rotary mower, started work on his �Victa� mower in a garage in Concord in 1952.
Eventually the �Victa� mower made Richardson a multi-millionaire but while many agree he deserved credit for his insight into the mower�s potential others, like Walter, also felt he copied the basic form and method of propulsion from Lawrence Hall�s �Mowhall� mower. The Hall family�s claim is backed up by John Longhurst who was a teenager apprenticed to Hall as a fitter and machinist around this time.
According to Longhurst, Merve Richardson, then an associate of Hall�s, visited the workshop one day when Hall was fitting his mower with a �snorkel� to prevent the engine being clogged with dust. After Merve commented on what a wonderful idea it was Hall proceeded to demonstrate how the mower could cut even the longest grass.
Eventually Richardson came up with the �Victa� mower which was much lighter and more compact in design and which would go on to make millions. Hall�s �Mowhall� mower while far less successful is arguably no less important to this great Australian story of invention. It is certainly rarer and this �Mowhall� mower has been on display in the Concord Heritage Society Museum since the 1980s, accompanied by a sign declaring it to be �the machine from which all modern mowers were copies�.
