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'Edwin Beard Budding' (1795-1846), an engineer from Stroud, Gloucestershire, was the English inventor of the lawnmower (1830) and adjustable spanner.
Born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, Edwin Budding was an engineer. In 1830 he invented the lawn mower and the first adjustable spanner. He got the idea after seeing a machine in a local cloth mill which used a cutting cylinder (or bladed reel) mounted on a bench to trim cloth to make a smooth finish after weaving. Budding realised that a similar concept would enable the cutting of grass if the mechanism could be mounted in a wheeled frame to make the blades rotate close to the lawn's surface. He went into partnership with a local engineer, John Ferrabee, and together they made mowers in a factory at Stroud. Examples of the early Budding type mowers can be seen in Stroud Museum, the London Science Museum and at Milton Keynes Museum.