Specifically, the publication published on June 28, 1959 from the comic book Closer Than We Think by author Arrthur Radebaugh said that automatic lawn mowers using solar energy were about to become a reality. The biggest barrier is, how it “sees” the object and does not rush into pets or children.
Today, lawn mowing robots are quite popular, even if their market is very limited. However, this type of machine appeared many years ago.
We were promised that there would be automatic, solar-powered lawn mowers. That was proven by a hand-drawn illustration in a comic book magazine in 1959. It predicted the rise of these machines but the problem was, Americans were afraid of the automaton. full of sharp knives hovering over their lawn.
It uses the term “electric eye” popular in the 1950s, referring to electronic sensors. In fact, the term electronic eye has been around since 1924, describing sensors mounted on drones.
Americans were terrified of the automatic machines laden with sharp knives that hovered over their lawns.
The solar lawn mower is described as follows:
“The fully automated, solar-powered lawn mower is ready for a more advanced stage of research. Engineers at Moto-Mower are looking to control it with a perforated tape, similar to a machine. businesses, powering it from stored solar energy.
When the grass reaches the height to be trimmed, the electric eye will signal the lawn mower to come out of the box, cut according to the exact pattern given, remove the entangled grass and return to its original position and turn off the power.
It can be easily adjusted to fertilize or shovel snow.”
It sounds very good, but this type of fictional machine at that time had to be perfected and approved by the US military for a different purpose.
Apparently, the military wasn’t interested in mowing the lawn. They are interested in handling other organic materials, for example… human corpses. The idea is similar to the EART, an autonomous robot that was once hoped to handle corpses in war. And thankfully, they just stay on the drawing board, not into reality.