Eureka ! This Vacuum Sucks. Thanks Booth.
Written by Christopher McCaa
From a horse-drawn monstrosity to a state of the art, autonomous household cleaning aid, the vacuum cleaner has indeed come a long way from its humble beginnings of one man, a handkerchief and a dream.
During a recent cleaning spree, I was sweeping up the dirt covered floor of my mountain cottage, when I began to long for a modern-day amenity afforded to most civilized Americans. With burning arms and my patience growing thin, I longed for the convenience of a device often taken for granted, the vacuum cleaner. Soon, my mind began to wonder about the circumstances surrounding the development of this staple of the industrialized world. Thankfully, our society has produced numerous minds of great capacity, which long ago sought to solve such quandaries. For some, the word inventor conjures up the image of a spectacled scientist mixing potent chemicals amidst a collection of smoking beakers. But upon further investigation, I found inventions like the vacuum cleaner are often birthed in far more pedestrian and often comical circumstances.
Take for instance H. Cecil Booth, who in the early 20th century found himself hunched over a dinner chair sucking up dust with a handkerchief stuck to his mouth. It is likely this bizarre scenario would raise the eyebrows of readers if not written in the proper context. But this compromising circumstance was at the nucleus of a revolution in modern day household and commercial cleaning.
Booth’s idea for the development of the vacuum cleaner reportedly originated on our nations railways. While observing a boxcar worker blowing dust off passenger seats, Booth realized a machine that sucked up the debris would accomplish the task in a superior fashion. Booth’s engineering endeavor resulted in one of the first powered vacuum cleaners to be patented and produced for the public in 1901.
To turn his vision into reality, Booth engineered a large air-powered cleaning device known as the “Puffing Billy.” The cumbersome apparatus required the employment of horses for transportation and gasoline for power. Booth’s invention led to the establishment of the British Vacuum Cleaner Company, which served as an outlet for the inventor to refine his unique product and increase its efficiency.
But the dog eat dog world of the free market made room for many other ingenious minds who were working to improve the device. In 1905, Walter Griffith produced a portable vacuum cleaner that could be manually operated. The machine was named, "Griffith's Improved Vacuum Apparatus for Removing Dust from Carpets." The device’s main selling points were its portability and convenience. The “convenient” cleaner required the operator to compress a bellowed devise to produce the suction. Dust and debris were sucked up by a flexible and removable pipe, which could be fitted with a number of attachments for cleaning various surfaces.
But it was a janitor who made a significant breakthrough in the cleaner’s engineering design. James Murray Spangler developed an electric model using a pillowcase, a box and a fan. The key feature of the machine was its rotating brushes attached to the nozzle that loosened debris and increased the device’s cleaning power.
But, as most janitors can attest to, the career does not afford one the ability to fund the manufacture and sale of such a product on a large scale. As a result, Spangler sold the patented design to a man with a name synonymous with the vacuum, W. H. Hoover. Hoover, who owned Hoover Harness and Leather Goods, was looking for a new product, and Spangler’s device was just what the doctor ordered.
Under his guidance, Hoover became a household name, producing a seemingly unending line of vacuum cleaners. Since its earliest inception, the device has evolved into a state of the art machine, consisting of an ever-expanding variety of designs. Such varieties include the upright vacuum cleaner, a model found in most homes in the 20th century and a space-age robotic device, which cleans the floor without the aid of human guidance.
Trackback(0)
TrackBack URI for this entryComments (0)
Subscribe to this comment's feedWrite comment
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
-
Andres Serrano: If you Can’t Say Something Nice Relishing in the grotesque and offensive, Andres Serrano challenges the world to remember what mama always said. When Andres Serrano entered the art world, it was with a bang. Thanks to his 1987 photograph...
-
The healthful spoils of war At the dawn of the 20th century, as Europe endured the 1st World War, a young German quietly went about his business, leading a fitness program on the Isle of Man in the midst of the Irish Sea....
-
The Problem with Picasso Whether a student of his work for decades or minutes, everyone who approaches the paintings of Pablo Picasso is left with the same dilemma. Alongside Michael Jackson, Michael Jordon, and Mickey...
-
Undiscovered Wine Country – Mendoza, Argentina When most people think wine, they think of California’s Napa Valley and the wine regions of Tuscany in Italy or Burgundy in France. But these destinations don’t have a monopoly on the...
-
The celebrity carpenter from the south Armed with carpentry skills, a bull-horn and a hefty dose of ADHD, Gary "Ty" Pennington has become a reality television star and in the process improved hundreds of lives through his altruistic architecture....
- 1
- 2
- 3
