Vintage Vacuum Cleaners

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The words alone are enough to suck us in—Bissell, Hoover, Kirby, Regina, Eureka, and, best of all, Electrolux. These are the vacuum cleaners of yesteryear, before Dyson and Roomba turned housecleaning into soulless science. They were noisy, they...
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The words alone are enough to suck us in—Bissell, Hoover, Kirby, Regina, Eureka, and, best of all, Electrolux. These are the vacuum cleaners of yesteryear, before Dyson and Roomba turned housecleaning into soulless science. They were noisy, they were cumbersome, and, if you were pushing a real clunker, they spewed as much dander and dust into your living room as they removed. But as works of domestic art and technology, nothing beats a vintage vacuum cleaner. The most important forebear of the vacuum cleaner may be a "carpet-sweeper" patented by Melville R. Bissell of Grand Rapids, Michigan, on September 19, 1876. Bissell's improvements to this mechanical genre of sweeping devices included the ability to remove debris from uneven surfaces and to get closer than other sweepers to furniture and walls. Bissell's invention, which he branded as the "Grand Rapids," was initially assembled at home with the help of his wife, Anna, before being sold by the couple door-to-door. By 1883, the pair had opened a Bissell factory devoted to the mass production of carpet sweepers. After Melville's death in 1889, Anna became the firm's CEO. She successfully marketed her company's product in England, finding a customer in Queen Victoria. The Grand Rapids did not use suction to remove dust and dirt from floors, nor was it powered by electricity, but its design—a relatively lightweight device that could be pushed around a room by just about anyone—gave subsequent vacuum-cleaner inventors a model to which they could aspire. The English engineer Hubert Cecil Booth's 1901 gasoline powered, horse-drawn vacuum cleaner, which he called the Puffing Billy, was not such a model. In fact, the contraption was so large that it had to be placed outside a home that needed vacuuming, with hoses snaking from the noisy device to the bedrooms, sitting rooms, and parlors within. Soon, a number of inventors were hard at work trying to miniaturize, and then electrify, the Puffing Billy. In...
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