It was so heavy that his son and nephew had to pull it with a rope as well as push it across the lawn. Mervyn Victor Richardson saw Hall's mower demonstrated in a park in Concord, Sydney and forgot about it.
Four years later, he made some cylinder type mowers for his son's part time lawn-mowing business. Then he tinkered together a lightweight, cheap, prototype rotary-blade lawn-mower with a peach tin for its petrol tank and a two-stroke engine. Word spread and neighbours clamoured for them. It was the ideal machine to take the backbreaking effort out of mowing the rough grass backyards of Sydney's growing suburban sprawl. Within two years Richardson sold 20 Victa brand mowers and had already begun to export them.
This venture gave him his first taste of success and financial security, but the business did not survive the Depression. By the early s Mervyn, Vera and their baby son Garry were reduced to living in a single room at North Strathfield.
Richardson regularly walked to the city in search of work and eventually became a travelling salesman for the Gold Star Coupon Co.
To supplement his income, he studied logarithmic scales so that he could calibrate by hand and sell slide-rules. A new job as an engineering salesman led to improved circumstances. In the family moved to a house in Bray Street, Concord, that Richardson had designed. When Garry started a lawn-mowing business during university vacations, his father made two complex reel-type mowers to help him.
Driven by the desire to succeed again, Mervyn continued to build lawnmowers in his backyard workshop and registered the name Victa Mowers a corruption of his middle name in mid Over the next two years he built and sold sixty reel-type mowers, powered by imported Villiers two-stroke engines. In Richardson had watched a public demonstration of the 'Mowhall' rotary-blade lawnmower, which required two people to push and pull it over long grass and was never a commercial success.
In August he hit upon the idea of putting a Villiers engine on its side to drive a set of rotating blades. Within a few hours he had assembled the prototype of the Victa rotary lawnmower from scrap metal, billy-cart wheels, and a jam tin used as a petrol tank. To his family's amazement the contraption cut fine grass with precision and yet could plough through long grass and weeds.
Although Richardson had developed rotating reel mowers for his son's business, in August 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 , 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 , the company had moved to a new factory at Milperra, New South Wales, and its 3, employees were building , mowers a year for export to 28 countries. Since , Victa has sold over 8 million lawn mowers in 30 countries. Archibald taught in country schools and in Sydney from Mervyn's lack of formal education beyond primary school did not inhibit his flair as an amateur designer and mechanic.
After being apprenticed to a jeweller, he worked as a signwriter. In he helped his elder brother Archibald to build a low-winged monoplane, for which they designed a radial engine with contra-rotating propellers. The brothers were filmed demonstrating the machine at Mascot, Sydney.
Later that day Archibald, who had invested everything in the project, crashed the aircraft beyond repair. In the s Mervyn worked as a motorcar salesman.
This venture gave him his first taste of success and financial security, but the business did not survive the Depression. By the early s Mervyn, Vera and their baby son Garry were reduced to living in a single room at North Strathfield.
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