Photo:
Early vacuum cleaners on display in department store
*June
8 - Ives McGaffey patents the vacuum cleaner, a "sweeping machine" in 1869.
This was the first patent for a device that cleaned rugs.
Hubert Cecil
Booth, a British engineer, received a British patent for a vacuum cleaner
on August 30th 1901 and took the form of a large, horse-drawn,
petrol-driven unit which was parked outside the building to be cleaned
with long hoses being fed through the windows. As Hubert Booth, demonstrated his vacuuming device
in a restaurant in 1901, two Americans introduced variations on the same
theme. Corinne Dufour invented a device that sucked dust into a wet sponge.
David E. Kenney’s huge machine was installed in the cellar and connected
to a network of pipes leading to each room in the house. A corps of cleaners
moved the machine from house to house.
In 1907, James
Murray Spangler, a janitor in a Canton, Ohio
department store, deduced that the carpet sweeper he used was the source
of his cough. He tinkered with an old fan motor and attached it to a soap
box stapled to a broom handle. Using a pillow case as a dust collector
on the contraption, Spangler invented a portable electric vacuum cleaner.
He then improved his basic model the first to use both a cloth filter bag
and cleaning attachments, and received a patent in 1908, and formed the
Electric Suction Sweeper Company. One of the first buyers was a cousin,
whose husband, William H. Hoover, later became the president of the Hoover
Company, with Spangler as superintendent. Hoover’s improvements resembled
a bagpipe attached to a cake box, but they worked. Sluggish sales were
given a kick by Hoover’s 10 day, free home trial, and eventually there
was a Hoover® vacuum cleaner in nearly every home.
Other Trivia -
John Thurman John Thurman started a horse drawn
(door to door service) vacuum system in St. Louis, similiar to Booth's.
His vacuuming services were priced at $4 per visit in 1903. He invented
his gasoline powered vacuum cleaner, in 1899 and some historians consider
it the first motorized vacuum cleaner. Thurman's machine was patented on
October 3, 1899 (patent #634,042).
Carpet
Sweeper The dust kicked
up in Melville and Anna Bissell’s crockery shop and inspired Melville Bissell’s
invention of the carpet sweeper. Originally developed to preserve Melville’s
health by sweeping away the dust, the Bissells soon recognized the sweeper’s
market potential. Women neighbors of the Bissells, working out of their
homes in Grand Rapids, Michigan, put together the inner workings and cases
of the sweeper. They secured tufts of hog bristles with string, dipped
the tufts into hot pitch, inserted the tufts into brush rollers, and trimmed
them with scissors. Mrs. Bissell then gathered the parts in a clothes basket
and took them back to a room above the store for assembly. While production
was underway, Mr. Bissell was on the road selling his new invention. To
demonstrate, he threw a handful of dirt onto a carpet while his prospective
customer watched the dirt disappear into the clanging contraption… a sale
was made. The Bissell Carpet Sweeper ® remains virtually unchanged
today.
Vintage
Vacuum Cleaner Museum Wait for the download -- you can
clean up with the treasures in this website, sound effects.
*The
Whirlwind: Oldest Vacuum Cleaner In The World (non-electric)
By Robert Taber, from "Floor Care
Professional", - the vacuum cleaner was invented in a Chicago basement
in 1869. It was the brainchild of Ives W. McGaffey. McGaffey obtained a
patent for the machine on June 5, 1869, calling it the Whirlwind. It was
the first hand-pumped vacuum cleaner in the United States, a wood and canvas
contraption.
Vacuum
Cleaner Facts Find out who invented the first
vacuum cleaners & when other features were added (like electric motors).
The Hoover Company of New Berlin, Ohio
(now North Canton) built the first electric vacuum cleaner that used both
a cloth filter bag and cleaning attachments starting in the year 1908.
It was invented by James Spangler of Canton, Ohio the previous year.
Air-way Sanitizor which began in Toledo,
Ohio in 1920, introduced a new product, the "filter fiber" disposable bag
- maybe the most important cleaning "first" of all.
Sucking
up to the Vacuum Cleaner In 1907, William Henry Hoover produced
the first commercial bag-on-a-stick upright vacuum cleaner in Ohio, USA,
although he was not responsible for its design. He bought the patent from
his wife's cousin, James Murray Spangler. By 1919, Hoover cleaners were
being manufactured in the UK, complete with the "beater bar" to establish
the time honoured slogan "It beats as it sweeps as it cleans".
A
History of the Vacuum Cleaner From the History Channel - The first
"portable" electric vacuum was invented in 1905 by Chapman and Skinner
in San Francisco. It weighed 92 pounds and used a fan 18 inches in diameter
to produce the suction. Because of its size, it did not sell well.
A
History of the Vacuum Cleaner The first attempts to provide a
less muscle - straining, time - taking, more mechanical approach to floor
cleaning were begun in England in 1599 and again some 254 years later,
in 1853.
History
of Vacuum Cleaner Revolutionary idea of sucking in
dust was realized by Cecil Booth, a British engineer. One day, he watched
a electrical cleaner invented by an American inventor. Later he [Cecil
Booth] invented a vacuum cleaner called 'Booth's vacuum cleaning pump'
in 1901. This was a huge machine; a coach wagon equipped with a pump.
Related Information Kitchen
Appliances Who invented the refrigerator, dishwasher,
microwave oven and other kitchen appliances.
