The lawn mower was invented in 1830 by Edwin Beard Budding of Stroud, Gloucestershire, England. Budding's mower was designed primarily to cut the grass on sports grounds and extensive gardens, as a superior alternative to the scythe, and was granted a British patent on August 31, 1830.

Edwin had never set out to make a Lawnmower before. While working in a woolen mill in Stroud, Gloucester, the mill owner received an order for Guardsman’s uniforms - he wanted the cloth to be perfect and smooth. He asked Edwin Budding who had a reputation for problem-solving skills, to make him a machine that would cut all the tufts & bobbly bits off the cloth. What he devised was ‘a spinning cylinder blade over a fixed blade’.

Whilst testing his machine Edwin found it also cut grass very efficiently; so he went into partnership with a local engineer, John Ferrabee, and together they made mowers. However, people thought Edwin was a madman and a lunatic for making such a strange contraption as they thought that no one would want it. Consequently, he had to test his machine at night so as not to be seen. Eventually, he brought it out onto the market pronouncing ‘Gentlemen will find in using my machine an amusing & healthy exercise -  plus do the work of eight men’. 

After almost 200 years Edwin Budding’s invention has never changed or been bettered and is still the preferred machine to adorn the great lawns of Palaces, football, golf, cricket, tennis, and bowling greens all over the globe.

According to heritageopendays.org.uk