A Cut Above

Edwin did.

Edwin was an engineer who grew up in Wales when life was tough … but to Edwin’s way of thinking the grass was always greener on his side of fence.

One day he was working inside a mill on a cloth-cutting apparatus .. a machine that used carefully positioned knifes to cut and more importantly smooth fabric so it wouldn’t look ratty. Well he took a break and happened to watch some workers outside the factory working but not very effectively with some relatively inefficient tools … and that’s when he had his great idea.

He and a partner built a new kind of machine based on the mill’s cloth-cutting apparatus and they got a patent … then they went to sports fields and garden operators to show their device … and everyone wanted one … including Oxford College and the Regent Park Zoo in London … they loved Edwin’s machine because they could keep their sports fields and gardens looking nice, in a much faster, easier and less expensive way than ever before. And the rest is history.

Today, almost 300 years later, Edwin Budding’s idea is everywhere … its invention led to an explosion in the number of sports fields and gardens and helped change the world in a whole bunch of crazy ways … and you probably have one in your garage right now … the lawnmower

The Lawnmower is a great idea because if you can think of new uses for existing technology you just might earn a cut of the action.