Vacuum Cleaners Trivia
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58 free Vacuum Cleaners trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This vacuum cleaners trivia quiz covers the machine that turned housework upside down, from horse-drawn suction engines to robots that map your living room. The easy questions handle why Britons say 'hoover', who built the bagless cyclone, when the Roomba appeared and which brand gave the world a vacuum with a smiling face. From there it moves into the inventors: the janitor with an asthma problem and a pillowcase, the engineer who sucked dust through a handkerchief in a restaurant, and the salesman who merged a motor firm with a lamp maker to create Electrolux. The harder end is for tinkerers and trivia-night regulars: the price of Hoover's Model O, the number of Dyson prototypes, the country where the G-Force was first sold, the EU wattage cap, the physics of suction and airwatts, the artist who put new vacuums in glass cases, and the promotion that sank Hoover in Britain. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on vacuum cleaners and the companies and inventors involved, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, our inventions, household appliances and technology quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the children's TV series Teletubbies, what is the name of the vacuum cleaner that keeps the house tidy?
Noo-Noo
Noo-Noo, a vacuum cleaner with a mind of his own, tidies the Teletubbies' home. When he misbehaves and sucks up their tubby toast, they shout 'Naughty Noo-Noo' and give chase.
Q 02In which film comedy does the villains' ship turn into a giant maid and vacuum the air off a planet?
Spaceballs
Spaceballs. In Mel Brooks's Star Wars send-up the villains' ship becomes 'Mega-Maid' and sucks up the planet Druidia's air, until the hero throws her vacuum cleaner into reverse.
Q 03What name did Ives McGaffey give the hand-cranked, fan-driven sweeping machine he patented in Chicago in 1869?
Whirlwind
Whirlwind was Ives McGaffey's name for it, though the patent calls it only a 'sweeping machine'. Most of his stock is said to have burned in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and only two are known to survive.
Q 04Which British engineer built the horse-drawn 'Puffing Billy' suction cleaner in 1901?
Hubert Cecil Booth
Hubert Cecil Booth's petrol-driven pump was too big to take indoors, so it stood in the street while long hoses went in through the windows. A visit became a show, and householders held 'vacuum tea parties' around it.
Q 05The Puffing Billy's inventor designed which fairground attractions for London, Blackpool, Paris and Vienna?
Ferris wheels
Ferris wheels, including Vienna's famous Riesenrad, were his work as a young engineer in the 1890s. His noisy street-side vacuum cleaner later landed him in court for frightening horses.
Q 06The British Vacuum Cleaner Company cleaned Westminster Abbey's carpets before whose coronation in 1902?
Edward VII
Edward VII. The job led to a demonstration at Buckingham Palace, and the royal household became a customer after seeing how much dirt the machine drew out of its carpets.
Q 07How did the Puffing Billy's inventor test his idea?
Sucking through a handkerchief on a chair
Sucking through a handkerchief on a chair in a restaurant left dust clinging to the underside of the cloth, proof that a filter could trap dirt. The story goes that he came up choking.
Q 08During the First World War, a fleet of vacuum cleaners removed 26 tons of dust from which London landmark?
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace. Naval reservists billeted in the huge glass hall had been struck by spotted fever, so the machines spent weeks clearing the dust from its girders.
Q 09James Murray Spangler, whose 1907 electric suction sweeper became the first Hoover, worked as what?
A department store janitor
A department store janitor. Spangler was asthmatic and blamed the dust his carpet sweeper stirred up each night, so he rigged an old fan motor to it to pull the dirt away.
Q 10What household item caught the dirt on James Spangler's 1907 prototype suction sweeper?
A pillowcase
A pillowcase. It hung from a broom handle behind a fan, and the idea carried over: Hoover's first model, a year later, still caught its dirt in a cloth bag on the handle.
Q 11William Henry Hoover, who bought Spangler's patent in 1908, was a manufacturer of what?
Leather goods
Leather goods. Hoover set men to assembling the sweepers in a corner of his leather shop and kept Spangler on to run production, with his pay based on royalties.
Q 12Hoover's first vacuum, the 1908 Model O, sold for how much?
$60
$60. For that the buyer got a 40-pound machine, heavier and clumsier than a carpet sweeper, so it had to be sold on the deep-down dirt that a sweeper left behind.
Q 13How was Spangler connected to the man who bought his vacuum patent?
The buyer's wife was his cousin
Q 21Fisker & Nielsen, which launched a vacuum cleaner in 1910 and later became Nilfisk, was founded in which country?
Denmark
Denmark. Founder Fisker, an engineer, began in 1906 with an old lathe in a Copenhagen backyard, making small electric motors, before a former colleague, Nielsen, joined him.
Q 22How have Kirby vacuum cleaners traditionally been sold?
Door-to-door demonstrations
Door-to-door demonstrations. By 1956 Kirby had some 4,000 salespeople on doorsteps; the method stuck in the trade because buyers could watch a cleaner pull dirt from their own carpet.
Q 23Scott Fetzer, then the maker of Kirby vacuum cleaners, was bought in 1986 by which investor's conglomerate?
The buyer's wife was his cousin. Susan Hoover tried one of the sweepers at home, liked it and told her husband William, who bought the patent in 1908.
Q 14Which slogan did Hoover's advertising agency coin in 1919?
It beats as it sweeps as it cleans
It beats as it sweeps as it cleans. The line sold Hoover's edge over suction-only rivals: its cleaner shook the carpet to loosen trodden-in grit before sweeping it away.
Q 15Which 1930s Hoover model was a lightweight vacuum cleaner held in one hand?
Dustette
Dustette. Hoover made it for decades, and the National Trust's housekeeping manual came to recommend it for vacuuming fragile textiles through a nylon screen.
Q 16What did Hoover's 1950s Constellation cleaner do instead of rolling on wheels?
Floated on its own exhaust air
Floated on its own exhaust air. Shaped like a planet for the space age, it hovered behind its user like a small hovercraft, though the very first model still needed a wheeled dolly.
Q 17Hoover's disastrous 1992 'free flights' offer in Britain ended with Hoover Europe sold to which Italian firm?
Candy
Candy. Two flights with any £100 purchase drew far more takers than Hoover had planned for; the fiasco cost about £48 million and its American parent sold the European arm in 1995.
Q 18Which vacuum brand's founder, David, sold its lightweight uprights to hotels first and starred in its TV commercials?
Oreck
Oreck. Competitors said a cleaner that light could not last, so David Oreck took it to hotels first, reasoning that if quality hotels bought it, anyone would.
Q 19Which brand of vacuum cleaners shares its parent company with Ninja blenders and air fryers?
Shark
Shark. The company was called Euro-Pro until 2015, when it renamed itself SharkNinja because its two brands had become far better known than its own name.
Q 20Electrolux's name combines Elektromekaniska with Lux, a company that originally made what?
Kerosene lamps
Kerosene lamps. Salesman Axel Wenner-Gren brought the lamp maker and Elektromekaniska together in 1912 to build cleaners modelled on an American machine, and in 1919 the two names were joined.
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett later called the deal the prototype of the kind of acquisition he liked; a rival bidder had circled two years earlier, and he left the managers in place.
Q 24James Dyson's cyclone cleaner did away with which part, after his own vacuum kept clogging and losing suction?
The dust bag
The dust bag. Dyson noticed that a bag's pores clog with fine dust long before it is full, choking the airflow, and set out to build a cleaner that needed no bag at all.
Q 25How many prototypes did James Dyson famously build before his cyclonic vacuum cleaner finally worked?
5,127
5,127. Dyson counts 5,126 of them as failures; while he tinkered, his wife Deirdre's art teaching helped keep the family afloat.
Q 26In which country did Dyson's bright pink G-Force cleaner go on sale after makers at home turned it down?
Japan
Japan. The G-Force sold there for about $2,000 as a status symbol and won a 1991 design prize; the licence income paid for Dyson to start making cleaners under his own name.
Q 27Where did Dyson get the idea for cyclonic dirt separation?
A sawmill
A sawmill. Dyson studied the giant cone that spun sawdust out of its air, then taped a cardboard copy to his own vacuum cleaner to see whether the trick would work in miniature.
Q 28Before vacuum cleaners, James Dyson designed a wheelbarrow that replaced the wheel with what?
A ball
A ball. Dyson said it coped better with soft ground than a narrow wheel, and in 2005 he reused the idea under an upright vacuum cleaner.
Q 29In 2000 a British court ruled that Hoover's Triple Vortex cleaner had done what?
Infringed a rival's patent
Infringed a rival's patent. Makers had refused to license James Dyson's cyclone in the 1980s; once his own DC01 became Britain's top seller, Hoover launched a cyclone cleaner of its own and lost to him in court.
Q 30Which Wiltshire town is home to Dyson's main British research campus?
Malmesbury
Malmesbury. Dyson built its cleaners in the town until 2002, when production moved overseas; the engineers stayed, and a second campus later opened on a former airfield nearby.