A Brief History Of Vacuum Cleaners
by
Alison Cole ARTICLE REPRINTING IS PERMITTED
The first person to patent a machine for cleaning was David Hess in the year 1860. Housewives all over America had turned to using rugs and carpets, a trait brought over by the waves of immigrants coming from Europe, to cover their bare wood floors and keep the dust and dirt to a minimum. When they were dirty, they had to be carried outside, suspended somehow in the air and then beaten with a metal rod or heavy wooden stick.
A bit later someone invented a small, tennis racket-looking device called a rug beater for precisely this purpose. Mr. Hess soon realized that there was probably an easier way to clean rugs without all the fuss and mess and he invented the Carpet Sweeper which had a rotating brush combined with a bellows system that created suction. His amazing invention also used two water chambers to trap the dust and fine dirt. The only problem with Mr. Hess' machine is that there is no proof it was ever produced.
After Mr. Hess' invention, there came a period of wilder and weirder inventions that sought to accomplish the same thing. In the late 1870's, Melville Bissell (sound familiar?) marketed a carpet sweeper that picked up the dirt and dropped it into a pan behind the rotating brush. In 1899, John Thurman invented a gasoline-powered vacuum cleaner that is credited as being the first motorized version. In 1901 Hubert Booth of London invented the electric vacuum, a device so large that it was parked outside the house and a 100-foot long hose snaked its way inside and did the dirty work.
The device was so popular that housewives all over London held vacuum parties to enjoy the event. It wasn't until 1908 when James Spangler, a janitor in Ohio, invented the first portable, suction cleaner -- the precursor to today's high tech machines. He sold his patent to his cousin's husband, William Hoover (also familiar?) and the rest, as they say is history.
Information About The Author
Vacuum Cleaners Info provides detailed information about industrial, upright, and bagless vacuum cleaners, as well as vacuum cleaner bags, parts, and repair, plus reviews of best vacuum cleaners. Vacuum Cleaners Info is the sister site of
Sewing Machines Web.
Published by
Meta Search Engine LOOK-4IT.COM.
You can reprint this article for FREE at your web site. Doing this you agree to keep all texts and hyperlinks unchanged. Please keep
reference to LOOK-4IT.COM meta search engine as well, if you decide to use this article as a
free content for your web site.
Back to article category:
Vacuum Cleaners Additional Vacuum Cleaners Articles
The Benefits of Bagless Vacuum Cleaners What was unthinkable many years ago had suddenly become all the rage in the world of vacuum cleaners. The bag-less vacuum cleaner, once thought of as an impossible dream, has now become a profitable reality.
Pros and Cons of Upright Vacuum Cleaners The term "upright" vacuum cleaners came into existence when the Hoover Company attached the bag where the debris from the carpet was deposited onto the handle of the vacuum cleaner in the late 1940's and put the motor on wheels.
Essential Vacuum Cleaner Parts There are numerous places to find parts for a broken vacuum cleaner if you have someone in the house that's handy enough with tools to take a crack at fixing it.
A Review of Popular Vacuum Cleaner Products There are dozens of vacuum cleaner manufacturers producing hundreds of different types and styles of machines around the world. Cheap, lightweight machines coming out of China and Japan, to the efficient but unwieldy German types and the multi-functional machines coming from American manufacturers, there are a lot of choices on the market today.
A Guide to Industrial Vacuum Cleaners From the unwieldy looking machine being pushed or pulled around the dirty shop floor, to entire systems designed to keep manufacturing areas clean and safe, to recovery units whose sole function is to collect airborne materials and remove or safely store them, industrial vacuum cleaners have come a long way since their invention in the early 1900's.
