History of the Vacuum Cleaner

A brief look at the creation of the world-famous carpet cleaner.

Vacuum cleaners: the only things in life that suck in a good way. Without them we

would see little puffs of dust rising from the carpet with each and every step that we

take. But, since they’ve been around for over a century, that is a world which we

only have to imagine.

We at Clean Care Mobile – the carpet cleaner Kempton Park trusts – are very

familiar with the wonders of carpet cleaning. But, in case you missed this chapter in

your school history books, here is a brief look at the history of motorised carpet

cleaners, otherwise known as vacuums:

Manual carpet cleaners have been around for about 150 years (and no, we’re not

talking about regular, old brooms). In 1860, an inventive Iowa resident decided that

designing and building a device to make sweeping easier was less work than

sweeping itself, and so he set about inventing a machine that gathered dust with a

roller and then sucked it up with bellows (although we’re not sure what happened

when the bellows exhaled again…). Either way, this gave birth to similar designs,

which in turn spawned the motorised vacuum cleaner.

The Motorised Vacuum

A man with a name like Hubert Cecil Booth was never going to be the village idiot,

and so he made good on his intelligent-sounding name by inventing the motorised

vacuum cleaner in 1901, taking carpet cleaning to the next level.

Sadly, not many carpets could actually be cleaned by Booth’s invention, seeing as it

was so big that it had to be pulled by a horse. Also, given that it was powered by an

internal combustion engine, indoor use wasn’t exactly safe. The petrol motor was

then replaced by an electric motor, but this didn’t exactly help the bulkiness, and the

improved version still needed a horse to draw it.

In any case, Booth set up a company to market his invention. However, instead of

selling vacuum carpet cleaners as products, he sold his cleaning services.

Unfortunately the noisy nature of his business limited its appeal.

In 1905, a competitor, Walter Griffiths, released a portable vacuum cleaner that

could be used and stored inside a home, and only needed a single person to operate

it. This greatly resembled the modern home vacuums that are used today.

As a carpet cleaner Kempton Park knows and loves, our methods often go far

beyond simple vacuuming. However, we still acknowledge and praise the innovation

that created the industry in which we thrive.

Image credit: http://www.mrvacuumcleaner.co.uk/page3.htm