The history of the vacuum cleaner, like that of many great inventions, is surrounded in a great deal of mystery and lore. The vacuum cleaner, at least a forerunner of what we have today, came into being in Chicago in 1865. A local inventor created a simple machine out of wood and canvas that would suck the dirt from rugs. Unfortunately for him, and the rest of us, the Great Fire of Chicago destroyed most of his work.
The late 1800s saw an increase in the desire to engineer new products, and the vacuum cleaner was no exception. Few people think about what happened before the vacuum, but the ritual of spring-cleaning comes from the days before the vacuum. Most people at the time had huge rugs, not built-in carpeting, and people would drag the rugs out once a year. They would put the rugs on their clotheslines and beat them with brooms and other pole-like objects. Most people did the cleaning in the spring because a winter’s worth of soot had built up on the carpeting.
As the modern era dawned, many inventors searched for ways to deal with this annual cleaning ritual as it required a significant amount of labor, and at least a day’s work, to move everything around and then back again. The first vacuum cleaners, which debuted at the end of the nineteenth century, were interesting contraptions. They were large and very heavy, and most of them needed two people to operate.
Instead of making the vacuum sleek and slender, a trend that would come later, the original vacuum cleaner designers had no choice but to leave the models bulky. To make up for the size, they often designed vacuum cleaners that could double as tables, chairs, trunks, and other pieces of furniture. That way people could leave their vacuums out and company would not realize it.
Electrolux and Hoover, two of the most popular vacuum cleaner companies around today, started in the early 1900s. The engineers for these two companies worked on making the vacuum suction ability better. Americans in particular became obsessed with cleanliness and germs as the Victorian era ended, and the vacuum was the perfect industry to take advantage of these fears. The designers of vacuum cleaners began in the early 1900s to create models that worked better and were lighter. Throughout the twentieth century, companies invented better suction devices and slimmer hoses that contributed to the rise of the vacuum cleaner as a must-have appliance.
Today, vacuums are as light as the Oreck XL, which weighs in at a paltry eight pounds. Other models include handheld vacuums, which can be only one or two pounds. Even full-sized vacuum cleaners are very light, able to be operated by children. The rise of these vacuum cleaners has helped fuel the obsession with cleanliness as it is now possible to vacuum daily without much hassle. The most innovative vacuum currently on the market runs around the room and vacuums automatically. Now that is an invention worth buying!
