The 1959 Robot That Mowed the Road to Nowhere

Apart from the flowers, the most exciting attraction at the 1959 Chelsea Flower Show in London was probably Queen Elizabeth II. The most exciting attraction for Queen Elizabeth herself may well have been H.C. Webb & Co.'s radio-controlled electric lawn mower. The machine made its debut there as part of The Times' Garden of Tomorrow, and was on display at the Miracle Garden Exhibition in Paris [above] the following year. Video footage shows the queen and Prince Philip watching the lawn mower with the same sort of bemusement exhibited by people watching robot demonstrations today. The September 1960 issue of Radio Control Models and Electronics called the machine a "lazy gardener's dream of heaven" [PDF].