Vintage Horticultural and Garden Machinery Club

There are many horticultural items that we now take for granted. These include secateurs with their introduction in the early 1800s (read more about them here), and rotary mowers with the early Rotoscythe being described as unorthodox with the suggestion that it would never catch on (see Rotoscythe in the gallery).

With newly launched machines the marketing folk had a great deal of input when thinking up names, slogans, icons, logos, and advertising. How about Howard with their clever palindrome word ‘rotavator’, or Wheel Horse with ‘Get a Horse! Wheel Horse Of Course!’.  

We also take for granted a lot of instructions, icons and safety stickers on both old and new machines and which we easily understand these days. But there’s one that we all have seen but that I cannot find the source for – when did the hare & tortoise symbols, depicting fast and slow, first appear on machinery throttle controls?

The hare and tortoise symbols, possibly inspired by Aesop’s fables although in that scenario the steady tortoise wins the day, are popular on lawnmowers but did they also appear on other machines first? And were the rabbit and hare symbols a home-grown idea or imported from the USA, Europe or China, or even an invention by an engine manufacturer? Does anybody know?