OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums The History Forum Personal Histories LAWRENCE HALL & His MOHALL - The Historical Record

Hello ODK History Lovers

It is a well-known bit of Australian rotary lawnmower mythology that
Mervyn Victor Richardson's late 1952 Victa had in some sense copied a
1948 design by Lawrence William Hall of Five Dock, Sydney. Most history records
have corrected the record by attributing Lawrence Halls Mohall as a primary
source of inspiration for Merv's first Victa, the Rotomo of late 1952.

There is some important truth in that correction, but not a lot.

I have discussed Lawrence Hall's marine engine and associated products in
another article [see Related Reading]. In this second article, I explore what
the press and online sources have said about Lawrence Hall, his Mowhall, and its
contribution to the first Victa mower. A good summary is this:


Source: http://aumuseums.com/

TO BE CONTINUED ...

PART TWO - Canada Bay Museum - Home of the Mohall
The starting point to the Mohall story must be the machine's residence at
the Canada Bay Museum at 1 Bent Street, Concord, NSW. Note that Concord is
the spiritual home of Victa. Sydney's Inner-West was the power house of the
development of Australian-made rotary lawnmowers.




We are lucky this machine survives; less lucky some claims made about it ...


SOURCE: http://www.canadabay.nsw.gov.au/city-of-canada-bay-museum.html




TO BE CONTINUED ...

PART THREE - 1993 Newsprint - The Real Inventor of the Victa
One of the most important articles that gave credit to Lawrence Hall
appeared as part of a series, "Made in Sydney", in the Herald Sun of
December 28, 1993. The article, by Bob Beale, was split in two parts:
on page 1 and continued on page 4.



The article is quite amazing in its breadth - with background information
on Hall, and quotes from the Powerhouse Museum, and John Longhurst (of Pace
Mowers fame) who was apprenticed to Lawrence Hall! It's an article worth a
careful read.



TRANSCRIPT:
Lawrence Hall welded it all up at his Sydney workshop in 1948.
He used a disc from a plough, tin cans, steel pipe scraps and a
putt-putt boat engine: if you stood too close, its spinning blades
could take your toes off.

Today, it seems, that crusty machine devised by a forgotten
inventor still has the power to cut down a myth about the origins of
that icon of Australian suburban culture, the Victa lawn mower.

The man who started producing the Victa in his Concord garage in
1952 and went on to become a multi-millionaire, the late Mervyn
Victor Richardson, long ago won popular and textbook credit for
inventing Australia's first petrol-engined rotary mower.

The mower symbolised Sydney's postwar expansion, the
machine needed to tackle the larger lawns and rougher back-
yards of the new suburbs and "turn grass into lawn".

Mr Richardson certainly deserves credit for his insight into
the mower's potential - more than five million Victas have been made
and models have been exported to over 50 countries - and for his hard
work and innovative sales techniques, according to the curator of
product design and marketing at the Powerhouse Museum, Mr
Richard Wood.

But Mr Wood is now convinced that Mr Richardson copied Law-
rence Hall's 'Mowhall' mower. "Hall created the basic form and
devised the method of propulsion: he was the inventor and
Richardson was the innovator." he said.

Mr Hall was self-taught, a compulsive inventor who learned
his practical wavs in his south at Manilla, near Tamworth. He died
in 1979. His mower was powered by another of his inventions, a
three-horsepower marine engine. His family still runs the engineer-
ing business he set up at Five Dock, now Lawrence Hall and Sons of
Mortlake. The) attest that he invented his mower before Mr
Richardson's.

His son Walter remembers it being built to tame an overgrown
lawn and tennis court at his grandparents' home in Concord.

"Many's the time I pushed this thing and cursed like fury,"
Walter Hall said yesterday. "It was a heavy old monster and I
nearly cut my foot off with it."

Their claim is backed by one of Australia's richest men. John Lon-
ghurst, who built the Dreamworld park in Queensland. He clearly
remembers the day Mr Richardson first saw Mr Hall's invention.

Mr Longhurst was then a teenager apprenticed to Lawrence
Hall as a fitter and machinist and Mr Richardson was a
travelling salesman. Mr Richard-son called in one day to see Mr
Hall, who was fitting his mower with a "snorkel" to prevent its
engine being clogged with dust.

"I remember Merv walked in through the door and I heard him
say, "My, Lawrie, what a wonderful idea!," Mr Longhurst said.

They demonstrated the mower to Mr Richardson, showing how it
could cut even the longest grass. "He was staggered by the idea,"
Mr Longhurst said.

Mr Richardson asked Mr Hall if he could copy it and even used
scrap materials and borrowed tools from Mr Hall to make his much
lighter and more practical prototype Victa.

Soon Mr Richardson had quit as a salesman, was doing a roaring
trade in mowers and was back asking Mr Hall to supply 200 engines a week:
"I remember Lawrie laughed and said Merv had gone off his head - what
would he do with 200 engines a week?

"I guess he didn't realise the market was so big for mowers. But
even if he did I don't know that he would have wanted to do much about
it... As an engineer, in my opinion, he was a genius."

Mr Longhurst certainly saw the potential for mowers, though. At 22, he
sank his savings of $800 into his own business making the Pace rotary
mower. Within a few years he was making 1,000 a week, and his competi-
tion was so fierce that Victa bought him out in the 1960s for $500,000.

Even though Mr Hall's machine was for many years on public display
at the Concord Historical Society, accompanied by a sign declaring it to
be Mr Hall's invention and "the machine from which all modern
mowers were copied", Mr Richardson has continued to be given the
inventor's credit.

Mr Richardson himself did not apparently challenge that idea: "In the
end I think he almost believed he did invent it himself," Mr Longhurst said.

Victa's national marketing manager, Mr Peter Morison, disagrees.
He says there is evidence that the first petrol-driven rotary mowers were
invented in the US in the 1930s.

The Victa was highly original in its own way, and Mr Richardson
deserved credit for inventing many key refinements to the mower, he said.

TO BE CONTINUED ...

PART FOUR - 2008 & 2010 Newsprint - The Historical Record
There are two other stand-out articles about Lawrence Hall.
They come from 2008 and 2010 and represent the push by the
Hall family to get recognition in the Victa story at that time.
Rightly so ...

They are:
- Cutting down the myth to find the man behind the mower [2008] and;
- Museum's boat has a story to tell [2010].

The first article has quotes from Lawrence's son, Frank, and his
recollections of the event:

With a boat engine turned on its side, a kerosene tin for a petrol tank and
water pipe handles, the mower was a model of ingenuity, Frank said.

But there's more - this time from Granddaughter Karen ,
"But the Hall family insist the truth should still be told.
Over the past 15 years, Lawrence's granddaughter, Karen, has penned letters
to media outlets and museums asking that history be corrected."

"Merv did market it - we're not taking that away from him. But it's
important to mention that he didn't invent it. Some people might say
"oh well, so what?" But as time goes by we won't have the opportunity
to correct the truth, because there won't be anyone to ask," Karen said.

The second article is equally important, and it reiterates the story the Hall
family have told. We also learn this: Longhurst (of Pace mower fame), married
Lawrence Hall's daughter!

I will reserve my comments, but these articles are a fascinating read, nonetheless!

PART FIVE - The Record Today - & My Thoughts
I feel Lawrence Hall deserves some credit in the Victa story.
Without the Hall family's push for his recognition in the late 20th Century,
that probably would not have been recognised in modern history records.

But there has been so much nonsense written!
I offer my thoughts here so that folk better understand the issues.

A fair record is presented for Wikipedia: -
The 'Victa' lawn mower was invented in 1952, in the backyard of Mervyn
Victor Richardson in Concord, Australia.

In 1951, Mervyn's son Garry mowed lawns to earn money in university holidays.
Garry borrowed Mervyn's Victa 14" 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 was not a very successful invention
because it required two people to use it, one to push and one to pull.

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.
Wikipaedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victa
Accessed July, 2017

Analysis & Commentary
History is not static. Many historical accounts of the Victa story seem to
suggest that the earth stood still between Hall's Mowhall of 1948 and
Richardson's Rotomo prototype of late 1952, and then Richardson's first
production Rotomo, also of late 1952.

I have spent considerable time in research and have written on these
forums about this; recording the things that did change in those five
years between Merv's first viewing of the Mohall in 1948 (apparently
in a park in Concord), and his prototype.

So, let's discuss the Mohall and the prototype Rotomo ...



If the Mohall deserves credit in the Victa story, then I don't think it
will be found in a comparison between the Mowhall and the Victa prototype.

By 1948, the idea of a small vertical shaft petrol engine was not new at
all. It maybe that Hall deserves some credit as the first recorded example
of doing this here to a lawnmower. By 1952, however, Merv would have had
many other influences (apart from his viewing the Hall machine).

The concept of the rotary lawnmower was never a new idea post-WWII.
There is clear evidence of the North American Miller electric rotary of
the late 1920s; and the British Rotoscythe in electric and petrol forms
from the 1930s.

At no stage do I believe Hall or Richardson conceived the rotary
lawnmower design in ignorance.

By 1952, Richardson must have seen the huge influence of the Australian
rotary lawnmower industry. There were electric rotaries in just about
every Sydney department store by 1952!

Whatever Merv Richardson 'took' from Hall's Mohall must be found -
in my view - by comparing the one-off Mohall to Richardson's first
production machine - the Rotomo.

TO BE CONTINUED ...

PART SIX - The Record Today - & My Thoughts
The Mohall was never a prototype for a lawnmower.
The Rotomo prototype was a deliberate proof of concept.
The Rotomo production machine is the clue to Hall's contribution!

When Lawrence Hall mounted one of his marine engines in a vertical shaft
configuration onto an old plough disc he did something different in Australia.
The design was not inspired by originality; but by necessity. He took an
existing idea and applied it to what he had ... his own small marine engine
and what was laying around at his factory. We know Hall was 'reconditioning'
comb sets for agricultural harvesters, so it is no stretch of the imagination
that he would have had plough discs readily at hand or available to him.

By this time, the rotary lawnmower was not a new concept at all.

Though the petrol-powered British Rotoscythe first sold here in the
interwar years, it was most certainly sold in Sydney from ... 1948.

The Australian-made rotary lawnmower appeared in ... 1948.
I have written at length on these forums - and another forum - at
length on this. The electric Tecnico was our first rotary lawnmower.
Post-WWII the rotary lawnmower form was well-established by 1952.

Lawrence Hall took 'prior knowledge' and applied it for a specific
purpose out of necessity. He thought it a good idea to cut his mum's
yard with one of these new rotaries- that could handle higher grasses -
and he could do it on the cheap ... perhaps a reconditioned Hall marine
engine mounted to a primitive chassis, and using an inverted
agricultural plough disc. A bit heavy? Well, yes!

This is John Mason's account of Merv's use of the 'plough-disc' design:-
THE PEACH TIN MOWER

So ... on this momentous Saturday afternoon he made a 'skeleton' frame of
flat wrought iron bar material to which he assembled two mild steel round
rods as axles, front and rear, and to which he attached four cast iron
billy-cart wheels. A piece of flat steel bar was bent like an inverted 'U'
and attached to the skeleton frame to serve as a handle.

On the skeleton frame, he mounted one of his Villiers mower engines in a
vertical position - the crankshaft was vertical with the flywheel magneto
and pulley (for the starting cord) uppermost. But it was the lower end of
the crankshaft which was to be the 'business' end of the experimental
machine. Here he attached a flat steel bar sharpened on the leading
edges and fixed by a heavy nut and washer to the lower end of the
crankshaft.

To provide the engine with a fuel supply of the petrol/oil 2-stroke
mixture he mounted a peach tin to which he fitted a small tap and a
piece of plastic tubing which connected to the carburettor.
It was this peach tin which gave the experimental model its name.

Having filled the peach tin with fuel he wound the cord onto the
pulley and gave it a pull and the engine burst into life under
control from the throttle lever mounted on the handle.

Merv pushed the mower into some long grass and it disappeared -
the grass not the mower, and after a few minutes doing the same
thing he saw that with some modifications here was the basis of
a new style mower/grass cutter.

He was ecstatic and called his wife to watch his demonstration -
the first demonstration of countless thousands by a Victa
Rotary Mower.

Amongst other things which Merv Richardson saw was that, in its
present skeletal form, the mower was potentially dangerous; because
stones and other objects could be thrown out at speed and likely to
injure the operator or bystanders. So it was back to the drawing board,
though I suspect the plans for the Peach Tin mower were just a few
rough sketches.

Quite early in his re-consideration of the design was the decision
to determine the width of cut at 18 inches (45cms) which was to be
10cms wider than the standard domestic reel type mower.

His next decision was that a firm base or chassis was needed on
which the engine could be mounted and for the attachment of the
handle, height adjustment mechanism and front and rear axle
brackets. The ideal base would be in the form of a round steel
plate with turned down edges to provide greater safety for
operator and onlooker.

Merv Richardson's engineering knowledge told him the only way
he could have a circular steel base was to have it spun to shape.
To make a die for a base-plate to be pressed out of sheet metal
would cost a lot of money, and before indulging in such
manufacturing luxury, lots of trial and error testing would be
necessary, leading to further modifications.

Spinning the base-plates was a one-off operation and Merv had a
few of them spun, and he set about making and assembling the
hand-made parts for his second and more advanced model.

The results were amazingly successful and this became the
base model for limited production of the Victa Rotomo.

TO BE CONTINUED ...

PART SEVEN - The Record Today - & My Thoughts, Cont'd
I concluded PART FIVE with this statement: -




I think this is the comparison that highlights Hall's contribution
to the first Victa rotary, and Australian rotary lawnmower design.

Hall's Mohall did not totally influence the direction Australian
lawnmower design was taking in the 1950s. Hall's biggest contribution
to design must go to base styling - Hall influenced the 'toe-cutter'
base that featured on the first production Victa Rotomo, and the
Rotomos of the 1950s.

Of course, Merv did not use a heavy plough disc from an agricultural
implement, but merely saw that 'spinning' (deforming thin steel by
physical pressure) was the cheapest means of producing a lightweight
lawnmower base. Merv copied the famous disc shape that would define a
few lawnmower makers of the 1950s.

The majority of 1950s AUS lawnmower makers did not follow this style.
They followed overseas trends in casting alloy (or steel pressing)
skirted bases. By 1960, skirted bases had won the safety argument.
The once dominant 'toe-cutter' became the small volume 'utility'
lawnmower.

TO BE CONTINUED ...

PART EIGHT - OTHER FEATURES
The Mohall was totally inappropriate for a domestic lawnmower design,
grossly overweight, it required considerable effort to push it - and
lift it - and the engine was unsuitable for any lightweight lawnmower.
Just have a look at the water tank and magneto.

But there is another interesting feature that seems to have gone
unrecognised ... the Mohall was, at some point, fitted with a snorkel
air cleaner [via a rubber hose connecting to the RH side, tubular
handle bar, with air intake at the handle grip.



Given that Merv had a snorkel patent of 1955, it is quite possible he was
influenced by the Mohall. The snorkel idea seems to have originated from
earlier automotive patents.


The Victa Snorkel
https://www.outdoorking-forum.com.au/forum/u...TA_PATENT_8359_%E2%80%93_Snorkel_&a.html

The Victa Prototype - The 'Peach Tin'
https://www.outdoorking-forum.com.au/forum/u.../victa-prototype-the-peach-tin-1952.html


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