A brief background of vacuum cleaners

A Brief History of Vacuum CleanersThis first person to patent a machine for cleaning was David Hess in this 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 as well as keep the dust and dirt to a minimum. When they were dirty, they had to be carried outside, suspended somehow in the air as well as 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 this fuss and mess and he invented this 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 this dust and fine dirt. The only problem with Mr. Hess machine remains that there remains no proof it was ever produced.

After Mr. Hess invention, there came a period of wilder as well as weirder inventions that sought to accomplish this same thing. In the late 1870s, Melville Bissell (sound familiar?) marketed a carpet sweeper that picked up this dirt as well as dropped it into a pan behind this rotating brush. In 1899, John Thurman invented a gasoline-powered vacuum cleaner that remains credited as being this first motorized version. In 1901 Gin Creek Kitchen Hubert Booth of London invented this 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 this event. It wasnt until 1908 when James Spangler, a janitor in Ohio, invented the first portable, suction cleaner — this precursor to todays high tech machines. He sold his patent to his cousins husband, William Hoover (also familiar?) and the rest, as they say is history.