Lou Butler's Boxhorn Battle

Inventors are marvellous people and Taranaki has some goodies. Lou Butler was one and his head was full of ideas. If you visit Puke Ariki you can watch a movie of his mighty boxthorn cruncher in action. It's incredible. This battle scarred steel monster boxes boxthorn hedges to bits. It's a mover and a shaker just like its inventor. Let's meet this amazing man.

Rewind

Lou was from Switzerland and he sailed to New Zealand with his family when he was nine.  The year was 1902.

True or false?  In 1902...

1. New Zealanders are in South Africa fighting a war.

2. Thomas Edison invents a new type of battery and says the electric motor car will now be a real competitor for petrol driven ones.

3. Australian women get the vote. The women of New Zealand are still waiting for their vote.

4. The tale of Peter Rabbit is published. It is written by a new author named Beatrix Potter.

5. New Zealand's coastal towns pump their sewage straight into their harbour.

Top ten!

Lou Butler was good at inventing and making labour saving devices. He didn't invent the ones listed below but they were invented in his lifetime. In fact Lou was born in the year of one the world's greatest ever inventions - the toaster in 1893! Rank these inventions in your own 'top ten of labour saving inventions,' and then compare your list with others.

Electric stove - 1896

Vacuum cleaner - 1901

Motor mower - 1902

Safety razor - 1904

Electric washing machine - 1908

Popup toaster - 1919 (an improvement on the 1893 version)

Chainsaw - 1920s

Sliced bread - 1928

Computer - 1936

TV Remote control - 1950

Velcro - 1955

Generation shutterbug

Different generations do the same job in different ways. Today's farmer for example makes big bales of hay. His father probably made small bales and his grandfather may have made haystacks. Try this in pairs or in a small group. Look at each photo in turn and work out:

How the job was done one generation before the technology you see was invented.

How today's generation does this job.

How the next generation might do the job.

• Look here for the firemen
• Look here for the brewery workers
• Look here for the farmers and the factory workers
• Look here for the dairy farmers getting in their cows
• Look here for the hay sweepers.

9. quandary (a) puzzle (b) relaxed state

Read on!

Read the story but keep an eye out for these things. Pair up and talk over the answers with a classmate when you finish reading.

• Where Butler drew his designs
• Why his bridges were easy to see
• How he surprised the haystack farmers
• The way retaining walls were made in the olden days
• How orphan lambs got a free drink
• The clever digger that was copied by someone else
• Who the Home Guard 'deathtraps' were meant to trap
• Why farmers couldn't use acres of their land
• Whether the old hedge cutter monsters still see a bit of action

Describe that man!

Choose five words from the list below that best describe Lou Butler. Try to end up with a list where each word shows a different aspect of his personality.

Innovator, creative, hardworking, determined, inventive, schemer, architect, businessman, engineer, planner, strong willed, problem solver.

My card son!

Design a business card that Lou Butler senior could have used.

In the middle print his name using capital letters.

In the top left hand corner print the year and place he was born in and the year he died.

In the top right hand corner list a success he achieved in his lifetime.

In the bottom left hand corner, under the heading of 'Inventor of the:', list three of the inventions you think are the most remarkable.

In the bottom right hand corner choose three words that best describe him.

In my day

Look here to see some occupations from the 'olden days'. Find the one that best matches what Lou Butler did.

Mean machine

Here's Lou's hay sweep but how does it work? Look here to see a photo of an old time haystack and a description of how it was made. Sketch your own 'photo' of Lou Butlers Auto Sweep in action. Think about it. Does the photo of the two hay sweeps show each sweep in the best position for sweeping hay?

Out with the old

Farmers didn't need Butler's sweep when the mobile hay baler took over. Haystacks were out and bales were in. Balers took over the world! Read this poem.

Now check out the photos on the sites below and find:

• The machines that "slay an entire field in a few hours"
• The "machines of a thousand fingers"
• The "starving dinosaurs"

Look here, and here and here too.

Hold me up!

Study the sheep sling photo from the story. Do this with a designer buddy. Design a sling for a horse or cow. Think carefully about:

• anchor points
• the slings and what they are made of
• food and water
• a non-escape design
• portability

It works like this

Study this photo:

Now write speech bubbles for the two men standing by the cab of the Butler horse float truck. The speech bubbles must explain why this trailer can get out of tight spots. Draw and write a thought bubble for the man standing behind the horse float. He's imagining a truck of the future like the one below. What might he be thinking?

Act out!

The Butler hedge cutters were spectacular inventions! They arrived on the scene when for some farmers the box thorn hedges might have seemed to be getting wider than the paddocks.  Imagine rolling up to a farm in one of these hoping the farmer would let you trim...

Act out this skit in groups. Two of you are the Butler boys and two of you are the farmers. The Butler boys must convince the farmers that this weird looking hedge cutter can do a good job! (Read the hedge cutter part in the story again if you need a few ideas.)

Fast forward to 2003

Look at the photograph of the modern hedge trimmer.  Print it out and label all the changes in technology that you can see when you compare it to an early Butler hedge cutter. If you can't print the photo, just make a list.

Inventor's flow chart!

Taranaki's inventors are still making the news. Michael Lawley has made an energy producing wind turbine out of recycled washing machine parts. Michael generates his own electricity on his New Plymouth farm using a waterwheel, wind turbines and solar panels. He's self sufficient! People are also buying the water turbines he makes.

Todd Billing from Oaonui has designed an ATV (All Terrain Vehicle) for part of his Bachelor of Design degree. Todd grew up on a farm so he knows ATVs can spell trouble if you aren't careful. He's kept the best features of ATVs, removed the not so good and added a few ideas of his own. Todd's Huskee will look good, work well and be safe.

Make an inventor's flow chart by putting these six word pairs in the right order. Add arrows and you could draw a cartoon for each part.

Make it, Sell it, Need it, Market it, Design it, Test it.