Yards have been used for centuries to enhance the beauty of large aristocratic mansions. By the time of the Revolutionary War, the open yard had become a distinctive feature of American culture. Open yards allowed colonial neighbors to keep a watch on each other's homes. In England, the open yard concept was imported from China during the Victorian era. The most important tool of lawn maintenance is the lawn mower. Although similar in function to agricultural mowing machines, the lawn mower is actually an adaptation of a nineteenth-century rotary shearer that was used to remove the nap, or excess fiber, from carpets. Englishman Thomas Plucknett is credited with inventing a mowing machine in 1805. It consisted of a revolving blade mounted between a pair of carriage wheels and was capable of indiscriminately cutting all types of grasses, including grain. The first mower specifically designed for keeping lawns trimmed was invented by Edwin Budding, an English textile engineer who made the adaptation from carpet shearer to grass shearer. His roller mower was patented in 1830 and was quite similar to the modern push mower.
Budding's mower was particularly useful because it could cut grass while it was dry (grass cut with a scythe had to be wet). Budding designed his mower to trap and cut the blades of grass between rotating cutting blades and a fixed cutting blade. Push mowers are still popular with city homeowners and with exercise enthusiasts. In 1832 another Englishman, Robert Ransome, secured licenses to manufacture Budding's machine. Subsequent improvements by Ransome led to the first gasoline-powered mower in 1899, a large riding mower designed for cutting sports fields. An electric mower was introduced in 1926, and the first electric mower with rotating blades was marketed in 1958. During the 1950s and 1960s, electric-and gasoline-powered mowers became increasingly popular as people moved into suburban homes with larger parcels of land. The increased use of power mowers by individual homeowners brought about a call for new safety measures. The electric mower became nearly extinct during the 1970s because it was too easy to run the mower over the electric chord hidden in the grass, electrocuting the user. Also, the cutting blades on all types of power mowers would fly off when they struck a rock or other hard object, causing serious injuries. The rotors were modified to prevent this, and safety release mechanisms were also added to the handles.
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