Published on January 4th, 2018 | by Sumit Bhowal

How Was The First Vacuum Cleaner Made?

Nowadays, many of us simply can’t imagine the cleaning process without a powerful, handy, and useful machine – the vacuum cleaner. However, there was a time when people were doing the vacuum’s job on their own, using brooms and complicating the process of cleaning the house. Luckily, we live in different times. Once, some inventors thought of people and made a quite useful device that we still use today, and that makes our lives much easier. Not so long ago, vacuums became our everyday helpers. Each of us has such tool at home.

You can read more about modern types of vacuum cleaners like the corded stick vacuum on our website if you are interested in them, but now we are going to walk you through their history, tell you what year was the first vacuum cleaner made and who its inventors are. We will figure out what was the first vacuum cleaner made of, where was the first vacuum cleaner made, how was the first vacuum cleaner made, and etc.

When Was The First Vacuum Cleaner Made?

Among those people who first proposed the idea of such cleaner, the historians tend to highlight the name of one American from Iowa – Daniel Hess, who received a patent for a mechanical device with rotating brushes, equipped with furs to create airflow in far 1860. Interestingly, Hess’s device didn’t have a dust bag but two water chambers for dust deposition and thus, it turns out that the “wet” version of this tool was invented earlier than the “dry” one!

The next step was made by Yves McCaffee from Chicago. He was the one who invented the “Whirlwind” machine in 1869. In accordance with the layout scheme, the “Whirlwind” was very similar to the modern “tower” type vacuum cleaner, which is still popular in America. The air was driven by a fan with a belt drive from the handle at the top of the device, which had to be turned by hand. Unfortunately, McCaffee’s attempts to adapt the electromotor to his instrument were not successful.

The “Whirlwind”

The Englishman Cecil Booth in 1901 has achieved success in the mechanization of a vacuum cleaner. His device “Puffing Billy” worked on the gasoline engine and was transporting through the streets by a horse-drawn carriage with a team of four people. A 98 feet long hose was brought into the rooms through windows. Booth’s car was widely recognized after it was used to clean up plague barracks in the London docks. The first VIP client for Booth was the royal court: it was necessary to vacuum a huge blue carpet of Westminster Abbey before the coronation of Edward VII. This was the first step to success. After that, the British royal couple happily demonstrated a technical novelty to the guests of their palace, including Kaiser Wilhelm, the heir of the Russian throne to Nicholas. Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid was so impressed by the device and ordered the same one for his palace in Constantinople.

“Puffing Billy” vacuum cleaner

What Company Made The First Vacuum Cleaner?

American Murray Spengler worked as a cleaner at the leather factory of William Hoover and suffered from an allergy to the dust. After reading about the triumphant success of Booth’s machine in the newspaper, he decided to create its electric version and in 1907, he built an unpretentious device, the core of which was a stick from a mop and a dust bag was made of a pillowcase. Nevertheless, the device worked! The inventor began selling his invention, and one of the first samples fell to the heart of Hoover’s wife. Hoover immediately realized that the new device has a great future and bought a patent for its production from Spengler. Thus, in 1908, the Hoover Company has become one of the most authoritative companies in this industry.

Hoover electric suction sweeper

The idea of this type of cleaner turned out to be very successful. The inventors from different countries took an active part in improving this device but the man who created one of the most popular models of this device was neither an inventor nor an engineer… He was a genius seller of an international scale.

Swede Axel Wenner-Gren was born in 1881. When he turned 21, he moved to Berlin, where he began his career as a seller at the company Separator (today the famous Swedish company Alfa Laval). In 1910, during his business trip in Vienna and strolling along Kertnerstrasse, Axel found himself interested in the outlandish American device displayed in the shop window. The device was called “Santo”. It had a motor and a pump weighed about 20 kg and was worth 500 SEK – it was a tool that can’t be called “everyday” and then young Axel said: “If I could make it easier and cheaper, I would sell it to every house in the world”.

For two years, Axel worked in the European branch of the company “Santo”. Meanwhile, he studied new selling methods of goods in the US. He returned to Sweden with a dream that was born in front of a showcase with an overseas vacuum cleaner and soon Wenner-Gren organized a team of engineers who began developing the first household device, which was launched in 1912. It was called Lux 1.

Lux 1 vacuum cleaner

The main merit of the Wenner-Gren’s team was the replacement of the air pump with a fan, to reduce the weight of the device to 30 lbs. Model Lux 1, which production was established in 1912 in a small factory in Stockholm, became a pioneer of an extensive line of household appliances. And the company Electrolux is now known all over the world. In 1921, a simple and convenient vacuum cleaner was installed on wheels with a cylindrical body; this famous Model V became the prototype for the numerous “clones” that were produced in different countries for many years.

Electrolux Model V

A Brief List Of The Dates

1860 – Daniel Hess invents a mechanical cleaner;

1869 – Yves MacAfee receives a patent for a vacuum with a fan and starts manufacturing it;

1901 – Cecil Booth invents a vacuum cleaner with a gasoline engine;

1905 – Walter Griffin develops replaceable attachments for the vacuum cleaner;

1907 – Murray Spengler creates a machine with an electric drive;

1908 – William Hoover starts the serial production of devices with the electric drive;

1912 – Swede Axel Wenner-Gren produces the first vacuum cleaner with a fan Lux 1 (later Electrolux);

1920 – Air-Way Sanitizer (USA) launches disposable dust bags on the market.

Tags: first, home, vacuum cleaner

About the Author

Sumit Bhowal An Internet addict and a MASTAN , Also a lazy Freelancer . I don't try to reinvent the wheel I just like to soak things in Steroid's :p Thanks (y)