Located in central Missouri, about 100 miles from St. Louis, not far from Route 66, it is located in the small town of St. James. Although the town only has a population of about 4,000, it is home to Tacon's vacuum cleaner factory, a massive facility that produces cleaners for 13 different lines and brands, including Maytag, Swiss, Riccar and Simply. Sitting on the lowest level of this huge factory is an even more unique place, a museum dedicated to vacuum cleaners. Tom Gasco is the curator there, and he will happily display his extensive collection of cleaners, ranging from cleaners from the 1910s all the way to a vacuum cleaner that joined George W. Bush's Air Force One. This fascinating museum takes visitors through the history of America's most popular washing machine. Now, that’s history – how the vacuum cleaner came to be.
People have been cleaning the floors in their homes for thousands of years. The broom, in its most primitive and handmade form, is a common tool for achieving this. However, it wasn't until Levi Dickinson invented the broom in 1797 that mass production of brooms began. The story goes like this: Levy's wife often complained about the fragility and inefficiency of her handmade broom. So Levi, a farmer in Hadley, Massachusetts, made her a broom from his hardest grain, a variety of sorghum, a grain used to feed livestock and produce alcohol. In fact, sugarcane is a type of sorghum. The stalks are tough, stretchy, and dry quickly—in other words, perfect for brooms. Levy's wife loved it, as did neighbors, family and friends. He soon planted more sorghum to meet the demand for brooms. By 1810, Levi Dickinson also invented a foot-operated broom machine to help mass-produce brooms. By the 1830s, broom factories were popping up in the Northeast.
While a sorghum-made, mass-produced, reliable broom is nice, it's still not particularly effective. It takes a person a long time to clean and consumes a lot of energy. There has to be a better way to clean. Yes. In 1860, with America less united and on the brink of Civil War, a man named Daniel Hess of West Union, Iowa, filed for a U.S. patent for a device that would revolutionize the cleaning industry in the near future. 29077. In the patent it is written
The nature of my invention is to draw in the dust and dirt in a machine by means of the air and to press it into water or its equivalent in order to treat it as hereinafter provided substantial damage.
This was the first known vacuum cleaner. Of course, he calls it something different - a "carpet sweeper" - and it has considerable problems. Additionally, there is no evidence that he ever sold it, let alone created what was described in his patent. Regardless, Hess recommended using a rotating brush and bellows device to create a strong jet of air. He also explained in the patent that "dust and fine dirt accompanies the air into the bellows, from the bellows to the water chamber." In other words, he is saying that the air will be purified by the water. It's unclear how Hess plans to give his machine the energy it needs to do its job.
In 1869, Ives W. McAfee of Chicago, Illinois, took this invention one step further. In his patent (U.S. Patent 91145) he explained his invention in terms of
The accumulation of dust and dirt in homes is a great annoyance to all good housekeepers, and a large proportion of the dust is so light that So much so that the ordinary cleaning process will cause it to die in the air, making it difficult to control or expel it from the room.
He went on to describe a machine similar to Hess's, except for two important additional components: a hand crank to generate the power, and another machine that stood upright, like a modern vacuum cleaner. So why many people d. William saw the commercial potential of this device and had the funds to produce and sell it on a large scale. He also wanted to diversify away from the leather industry, as the booming automotive industry began to cut into his bottom line, reducing the need for leather harnesses and related equipment. So, he bought the patent rights from Spangler, established a cooperative relationship with Spangler, and began mass production of his "vacuum cleaner".
William Hoover was also a great Marketer, he came up with the idea of ??going door to door to demonstrate how the vacuum cleaner worked.
He also placed a newspaper advertisement in the Saturday Evening Post, promising customers free use of the machine for ten days. If they're not satisfied, they can return the "vacuum cleaner" (Hoover named it) for free. By 1912, the Hoover vacuum cleaner had "sucked" the world, and its early market dominance led many to call it a "Hoover," regardless of the brand, which is still the case in some areas today.
If you liked this article, you might also like our new popular podcast, The Brain Food Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed) as well as: The Invention No One Wanted Made History One of the best-selling office products since Who Invented the Internet? Who invented tape? Who invented the elevator? Who invented Braille? ”
Bonus Fact: The earliest Hoover vacuum cleaner in Tom Gasco’s collection at the Vacuum Cleaner Museum is a 1910 model. It was one of the first electric vacuum cleaners to hit the market. They are looking for a model 0, if you happen to have one collecting dust in your attic. Essentially, the Model 0 vacuum cleaner was the first vacuum cleaner in the Hoover line. The earliest vacuum cleaner overall you can see in the Vacuum Cleaner Museum is the 1910 Royal Standard Electric. model, it beat the Hoover model by a month and sold more than 1 million units in the United States at a time when only a few million Americans had electricity due to the fires of Chicago and Boston in 1871 and 1872 respectively. , only two "Cyclones" remain in existence today, both in private collections. The English word "vacuum" comes from the Latin word vacuum, meaning "an empty space/an empty space". See Vacuum Cleaner - An Innovation in American Tradition. and Technology - Vacuum Cleaner Museum Vacuum Cleaner - IdeaFinder Asthma: The Biography of Mark Jackson James Spangler - *** Pneumatic Carpet Refresher - U.S. Patent 634042 Cabbet Sweeper - U.S. Patent 29077 Improved Sweeper - U.S. Patent 91145 The Vacuum Cleaner - *** The Vacuum Cleaner - BBC News The Story of the Vacuum Cleaner - History of British Vacuum Companies Early American Brooms - How a Broom Shop Broom Was Flattened - Slate. the Vacuum Cleaner: A History By Carroll Gantz Etymology Vacuu