He came up with the idea of ????inventing a vacuum cleaner in 1901. Once, he was dining in a London restaurant and saw that the back of the chair behind was covered with dust, so he blew it with his mouth. One sip, the result is predictable, the dust almost choked him to death!
Bruce was inspired by this and confidently developed a vacuum cleaner in his studio every day. Soon, his invention came out, but it was different from the daily vacuum cleaners in today's households. It was a very big machine, a behemoth. It has an air pump, a tin can containing dust and a filtering device, all installed on a cart and operated by two people simultaneously
. They pushed it down the street, one person pumping air while the other vacuumed it from house to house with a long tube.
It didn’t take long for Bruce’s vacuum cleaner to win widespread acclaim in London. So when Edward VIII held his coronation ceremony, he was specially asked to vacuum the exquisite carpets in Westminster Abbey.
Dust can even spread diseases and pose a threat to people's health. During World War I, many British soldiers were stationed in public buildings in London. A troop was stationed at the Crystal Palace, which served as the exhibition hall for the 1851 World's Fair. Not long after, a terrible disease—typhus—began to spread among the soldiers. After officials and doctors from the Ministry of Health went there for examination, they sent for Bruce. They believed that if they could clean the inside of this ancient building. The disease vectors, lice and fleas, can no longer survive, and the epidemic can be effectively controlled. This is indeed a brilliant idea. Bruce used 15 huge vacuum cleaners for two weeks - you will not believe it, sucking 26 tons of dust and dirt from the Crystal Palace! When the Crystal Palace became new again the soldiers no longer got sick.
Although Bruce's vacuum cleaner is very powerful, ordinary families cannot install such a huge machine indoors and hire two people to vacuum it. James Spangler, an American, began to develop small vacuum cleaners. Before this, Spangler had made many inventions, but none of them were successful. Based on the principle of the Bruce vacuum cleaner, he used a small motor to drive an air extractor, and installed a rotating brush at the suction port, so that the dust brushed by the brush was sucked into the interior of the vacuum cleaner. Spangler took his invention to Hoover, an Ohio industrialist. Hoover was very interested in his invention and paid for his patent, intending to put it into production after making slight improvements.