Mervyn Victor Richardson

Victa

Founded	1952
Headquarters	Moorebank, New South Wales
Website	www.victa.com

Victa is an Australian manufacturer of outdoor garden equipment, this includes petrol & electric lawn mowers, edgers, trimmers, chainsaws. They manufacture these in petrol & lithium-ion powered variants. However, Victa remains most well known for the Victa Lawn Mower.

The Victa brand is currently owned by the American engine manufacturer Briggs & Stratton, while being American owned, manufacturing is retained in Australia in Moorebank, New South Wales.

In Australia & New Zealand, Victa Products are sold through Bunnings Warehouse, specialist dealers and Mitre 10. Victa is also sold in limited quantities through specialist dealers internationally.

While most design & manufacturing capability has remained in Australia, such as assembly, research & development & parts for manufacture. All engine products are sourced from Briggs & Stratton's Facilities in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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.

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Wikipedia