During the industrial revolution, Mason worked at the British Steam Brush Works in London’s East End. He joined a partnership, later known as Raper Pearson and Gill, which was in the business of general small-brush making. At the time, all the brushes were made by hand. Mason Pearson incorporated the knowledge from his time in the wool processing industry to spark the invention of an automatic brush-boring machine to speed up the process of brush making and, in 1885 public recognition of this resulted in his being awarded a Silver Medal at the International Inventions Exhibition in London.

In the same year he extended the idea to the inspirational ‘pneumatic’ rubber-cushion hairbrush. It took until 1905 to improve and hone his technique, much of which was still required to be done by hand.