60 Fun Facts About Vacuum Cleaners

In the UK and Ireland, vacuum cleaners are commonly called what, after a brand name that became generic?

The Hoover Company was one of the first and most influential makers, and 'to hoover' is used as a verb.

The first manual vacuum cleaner, using bellows, was invented in 1860 by Daniel Hess in which US state?

Hess lived in West Union; eight years later Ives McGaffey patented a hand-cranked rival in Chicago.

What was the name of the early hand-cranked vacuum cleaner patented in Chicago in 1868?

Its inventor, Ives W. McGaffey, produced what is often called the first portable sweeping machine.

Which British engineer built the horse-drawn 'Puffing Billy' suction cleaner in 1901?

He tested his idea by sucking through a handkerchief laid on a restaurant chair and looking at the dirt on the other side.

The Puffing Billy's inventor designed which fairground attractions for London, Blackpool, Paris and Vienna?

He also designed suspension bridges and factories, and was once fined for frightening horses with his noisy machines.

The Puffing Billy's motorised successor cleaned Westminster Abbey's carpets before whose 1901 coronation?

His company's vans parked outside buildings and fed hoses through the windows to reach every room.

How did the Puffing Billy's inventor test his suction idea after seeing a blowing machine at a music hall?

Seeing the dust trapped on the underside convinced him that filtered suction, not blowing, was the answer.

What colour were the vans of the British Vacuum Cleaner Company, which fed hoses through windows?

The firm, set up in 1901 to market the Puffing Billy, was the first to print the phrase 'vacuum cleaner' in a prospectus.

James Murray Spangler, who invented the first portable electric vacuum in 1907, worked as what?

He was asthmatic and suspected his carpet sweeper was making him ill, so he added an electric fan motor, a soap box and a pillowcase.

What did Spangler use as the dust bag on his prototype Electric Suction Sweeper?

The dirt was blown by an electric fan into a soap box, and a rotating brush loosened debris from the carpet.

William Henry Hoover, who bought Spangler's patent in 1908, was a manufacturer of what?

He gave the machine a steel casing, casters and attachments; his company was renamed the Hoover Company in 1922.

Hoover's first vacuum, the 1908 Model O, sold for how much?

That is roughly $2,150 in 2025 money; the company sold 372 of them by the end of the year.

How was Spangler related to the man who bought his patent?

He gave one of his sweepers to his cousin Susan Troxel Hoover, who used it at home and showed her husband.

Hoover's beater bar, introduced in 1919, was sold with which slogan?

Disposable filter bags followed in the 1920s and an upright model in 1926.

Which Hoover product of 1930 is described as the world's first handheld vacuum cleaner?

Industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss was hired in the early 1930s to modernise the whole Hoover range.

Hoover's Constellation, introduced in 1954, was unusual because it did what instead of rolling on wheels?

It worked like a small hovercraft and was so quiet that Hoover re-released an updated version in 2006.

Hoover's disastrous 1992 British 'free flights' promotion led to the sale of Hoover Europe to whom?

Demand overwhelmed the offer, court action followed in 1993, and the Italian firm was in turn bought by Haier in 2018.

Hoover North America was sold in 2007 by Whirlpool to which Hong Kong manufacturer?

The $107 million deal split the American brand from Hoover Europe, which is now part of Haier.

Which Swedish company launched its Model V in 1921, a cleaner that lay flat on two thin metal runners?

Its name came from a 1919 merger of a motor maker with a lamp company called Lux.

Electrolux's name combines Elektromekaniska with Lux, a company that originally made what?

Salesman Axel Wenner-Gren brought the two together and became the majority shareholder and president.

Which Danish company was the first in continental Europe to sell vacuum cleaners, in 1910?

Their machine weighed just 17.5 kg and could be operated by one person; the German firm Vorwerk followed in the 1930s with direct sales.

James Kirby's first vacuum, the 1906 'Domestic Cyclone', separated dirt using what?

Kirby machines are still built in Cleveland, Ohio, and are famous for being sold through in-home demonstrations.

Kirby's parent company, Scott Fetzer, was bought in 1986 by which investor's conglomerate?

Buffett called Scott Fetzer the prototype of the kind of acquisition he liked; Ivan Boesky had bid $420 million two years earlier.

Who developed the bagless cyclonic vacuum after a Hoover Junior lost suction?

He built more than 5,000 prototypes over five years before anything reached the market.

Roughly how many prototypes did Dyson build before launching his first cyclonic cleaner in 1983?

His wife's salary as an art teacher helped keep the project going.

In which country was Dyson's pink G-Force cleaner launched by catalogue when no UK firm would touch it?

British manufacturers feared it would wreck the lucrative market for replacement dust bags; it sold for about $2,000.

Where did Dyson get the idea for cyclonic dirt separation?

Large cyclones there pull sawdust out of extracted air; he built a 30-foot version for his Ballbarrow factory first.

Dyson's first original invention was a wheelbarrow that replaced the wheel with what?

The Ballbarrow was featured on the BBC's Tomorrow's World; he later reused the ball idea in his vacuum cleaners.

Dyson's DC01, released in the UK in 1993 for £200, became the best-selling vacuum in how long?

By 2001 it held 47% of the upright market, despite critics saying nobody would pay double the price of a normal cleaner.

In which Wiltshire town was the Dyson company founded in 1991?

Vacuum production later moved to Malaysia, and a second campus opened on the old RAF Hullavington airfield nearby.

In 2019 Dyson moved its corporate headquarters from Britain to which country?

The company cited its fast-growing Asian markets and its frustration with EU bureaucracy.

Which company demonstrated the Trilobite, the first autonomous robot vacuum, on Tomorrow's World in 1997?

It reached shops in 2001, a year before the Roomba, but the Roomba became the first commercial success.

The Roomba robotic vacuum was first introduced in September of which year?

It sold a million units by 2004; engineer Joe Jones had first conceived the idea at MIT in 1989.

iRobot, maker of the Roomba, was founded in 1990 by three members of which university's AI lab?

Rodney Brooks, Colin Angle and Helen Greiner started out designing robots for space exploration and the military.

Which company's $1.7 billion deal to buy iRobot collapsed in 2024 under antitrust pressure?

Regulators worried about the privacy implications of the buyer gaining maps of customers' homes; the collapse cost a $94 million break-up fee.

Which two companies turned down early Roomba prototypes in the 1990s?

S. C. Johnson eventually funded the project before pulling out, and iRobot finished it alone.

Neato Robotics' 2009 robot vacuum was the first to map rooms using what technology?

The lidar map lets it clean methodically in straight lines and return to spots that were blocked earlier, such as where a dog was napping.

The 1979 Black & Decker DustBuster grew out of a tool designed for which programme?

NASA needed a self-contained cordless drill to extract lunar core samples, and the motor technology found its way into a household product.

Which institution acquired the original 1979 DustBuster in 1995?

It entered the National Museum of American History's electrical collection that year.

Britain's Henry vacuum cleaner, with its smiling face, is made by Numatic in which county?

More than 14 million Henrys have been made since 1981; the face was originally three stickers slapped on as a joke.

What is the name of Henry the vacuum cleaner's pink counterpart?

Both now have plush toys and T-shirts based on them.

Melville Bissell patented his 1876 carpet sweeper to clean what kind of business he ran with his wife?

Anna took over the company when he died in 1889, and Bissell remains North America's top floor-care brand by sales.

German appliance maker Miele, founded in 1899, began producing vacuum cleaners in which year?

Its slogan 'Immer Besser' means 'always better'; the firm also built 125 motorcars between 1912 and 1914.

Since 2017, EU rules have banned the sale of vacuum cleaners drawing more than how many watts?

An earlier 2014 limit of 1,600 W was tightened; input wattage measures electricity used, not cleaning power.

Tests show that vacuuming kills what share of adult fleas?

It kills 100% of young fleas, making the vacuum a surprisingly effective pest-control tool.

Which artist exhibited new vacuum cleaners sealed in lit vitrines in a series called The New?

One 1981 piece sits in the Museum of Modern Art and another at the Whitney; the machines have never been switched on.

Which musician used vacuum cleaners in many of his performances and on promotional artwork?

Other performers have played the hose as a modern didgeridoo or sampled the motor's whine for techno tracks.

The generic American term for a wet/dry drum vacuum comes from which brand name?

These drum-style machines can swallow sawdust, metal swarf and liquids that would wreck a household cleaner.

A typical domestic vacuum lowers the pressure inside its hose by about how much below atmospheric?

That works out to roughly 80 inches on the water-lift scale; atmospheric pressure then pushes the dust into the bag.

The unit used to express a vacuum cleaner's useful output power is called what?

ASTM defines it from airflow in cubic feet per minute and pressure; one airwatt is 0.9983 watts.

Which vacuum cleaner type, with the motor in a separate wheeled unit, dominates Europe?

In the UK they are often called cylinder models; uprights are more popular in the US.

Vacuums that trap dust in a liquid bath first appeared commercially in the 1920s under what name?

It later became the Rexair Rainbow; the dirty water must be dumped after every use to stop mould and bacteria.

John S. Thurman's 1898 'pneumatic carpet renovator' cleaned carpets by doing what?

His combustion-engine machine rode on a horse-drawn wagon as part of a door-to-door cleaning service in St. Louis.

Which Savannah, Georgia, inventor's 1899–1900 patents seem to mark the first electric-motor cleaner?

Her machine was another blown-air design, a year before Booth and Kenney independently invented suction cleaners in 1901.

Which American inventor built a 4,000-pound stationary steam-powered suction system in 1901?

It worked through pipes and hoses reaching every part of a building, the same year Booth's Puffing Billy appeared in Britain.

The first portable cleaner sold for homes was built in 1905 by Walter Griffiths in which English city?

It was powered by a servant squeezing a bellows to suck dust through a flexible pipe with interchangeable nozzles.

In which Ohio city has Kirby built its vacuum cleaners since the factory opened in 1916?

The plant remains open and every Kirby is still manufactured in the United States.

The upright 'Kobold' vacuum was introduced in Germany by which company?

Uprights are otherwise mostly a US, UK and Commonwealth preference; canister models dominate the rest of Europe.

Which cyclonic canister vacuum did Health-Mor introduce after buying a 1928 patent in 1939?

Cyclonic separation was well known in central vacuum systems decades before Dyson made it a household word.

Which type of cleaner is essentially a small canister unit strapped to the user's body?

They are favoured for commercial cleaning because the operator can move quickly across large areas.