Victa lawn mower

A Victa lawn mower

An early Victa lawn mower

The Victa lawn mower was invented in 1952, in Concord a suburb of Sydney, Australia, by Mervyn Victor Richardson.

In 1951, Mervyn's son Garry mowed lawns to earn money in university holidays. Garry borrowed Mervyn's cylinder-based power mower which was heavy to transport and to operate. Mervyn wanted to design a new mower for his son's business. Mervyn had seen Lawrence Hall's 'Mowhall' rotary lawn mower demonstrated in 1948. The heavy Mowhall required two people to use it (one to push and one to pull). It was not a very successful invention.

Although Richardson had developed rotating reel mowers for his son's business, in August 1952 he decided to make a rotary lawn mower similar to the Mowhall, using a Villiers two-stroke engine mounted on its side but utilising a lighter base plate, allowing use by a single operator. He wanted it to be cheaper, lighter and more powerful. It was called the "Peach-Tin Prototype", so named because it was made out of scrap metal with a peach tin used as a fuel tank.

By 1953, demand for the rotary mowers was so strong that Richardson gave up his job and became full-time manager of Victa Mowers Pty Ltd. In 1958, the company had moved to a new factory at Milperra NSW and its 3,000 employees were building 143,000 mowers a year for export to 28 countries.^[1]

Since 1952, Victa has sold over 7 million lawn mowers in 30 countries. In later years, the company was owned by GUD Holding Limited, who sold the Victa Lawn Care business to American-based Briggs & Stratton for A$23 million in 2008.^[2]

See also

• City of Canada Bay Museum

References

1. ^ Wood, Richard V. (2002). "Richardson, Mervyn Victor (1894 - 1972)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: Australian National University. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A160099b.htm.htm. Retrieved 2007-08-25. 
2. ^ Alice Coster (June 5, 2008). "Victa Lawncare mown down". Herald Sun. www.news.com.au. http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23812300-662,00.html. Retrieved 2009-07-07. 

External links

• Australian Innovates
• Victa website
• Review of Victa Mowers
• Victa Lawn Mower patent at IP Australia website
• National Museum of Australia 1958 Victa lawn mower, one of two held at the National Museum of Australia.