Interesting History of the Vacuum Cleaner

CONSUMER AND INDUSTRIAL VACUUM SYSTEMS HAVE THEIR ROOTS IN HISTORY

Today we pull the vacuum out of the hallway closet, turn it on, and clean it up everything between the floor and our feet. If we go back a hundred and fifty years though, it was the norm to just drag a rug outside, hang it, and beat the dust out of it! The immovable floors of homes, factories, and workshops stayed where they were, and so they had to be swept. While a good portion of the debris and dust went into the pan, the remainder got dispersed into the air, to be breathed in while it all slowly settled back down to the surfaces.

There was inspiration for invention - someone had a better way.

Actually, many people did!

U.S Patent No. 29.077 - 1860 - Daniel Hess

If you look at the patent application for what everyone thinks is the original vacuum, it looks a little like a button accordion turned on its side. The clever man from Iowa, Daniel Hess, figured out how to pull in the dust with an intricate bellows system, and direct it through two water chambers to purify the returning air. His creation is believed to be the first portable vacuum cleaner in the United States. (...and it's rumored that his brother spent his remaining years looking around the house for his missing accordion!)

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