This is the sort of man who invents.
He diagnoses faults and thinks out how to correct them. He did not, like the other man who had been mowing all his life, work as his father and grandfather had done, because it was the conventional manner. He thought out for himself and improved by simplification.
It is evident that the cut should come on gradually, not jump into a thick bunch of grass all at once, so he set the blade at an angle which made its entry into the grass deeper progressively, and so on with all the rest.
The inventor who knows his business, when he has made something to accomplish its object, does not rest there. This is only the “blocking out” as we sculptors call it.
Then he begins to simplify.
Anything not absolutely necessary is eliminated; he sees if some member cannot be dispensed with by making another fulfil two or even more functions.
This is how Nature works, many organs have several functions; the function of our tongues is not only speech but to help swallowing, to judge if what we put into our mouths is too hot or too cold to swallow, if it is fit for food, or corrosive, etc.
The automatic pistol is still capable of great improvement.
All the recoil is not made use of, some is wasted and diverts the aim by jumping the pistol about.
The noise of the discharge is an evil, it ought to be made to do work, not deafen.