The Vacuum Cleaner That Made History By Cleaning Smarter, Not Harder

We take vacuum cleaners for granted these days, with the most reliable vacuum brands easy to find. But cleaning was a whole other beast until James Spangler created the portable vacuum with a suction pump and rotating beater. There are plenty of old-school cleaning tools almost no one uses anymore, but many used to be ubiquitous for cleaning your carpets as best they could. As you can probably imagine, early carpets weren't particularly pleasant. As rugs became popular in the early 1800s with the wealthy, household staff were tasked with keeping them clean. Broom bristles damaged the carpets, so a variety of other techniques were used.

A carpet beater was a common tool, but more bizarre techniques, such as sprinkling damp tea leaves, grass clippings, or pieces of paper on the rug before sweeping, were also popular — the idea being that the wet cellulose would gather dust. Other methods, such as using bulls' stomach bile to treat stains, combined with chloroform to restore colors, are perhaps best left to the annals of history. 

Mechanical sweepers were invented in the 1850s before the arrival of the "Puffing Billy" in 1901, which was a vacuum cleaner pulled by a horse. Something more practical was desperately needed, and James Spangler, an amateur inventor, was going to be the man to do it.    

James Spangler was working as an overnight cleaner in a department store and found that using his given tool, a humble broom, was aggravating his asthma. He put together a prototype vacuum cleaner that used a ceiling fan motor and a pillowcase, along with combining a suction pump with the rotating brush from a mechanical sweeper. He patented his invention in 1908 but soon ran into financial issues. Fortunately for him, Susan Hoover — whose husband, William, owned a declining horse saddle business — had been an early adopter of the portable electric vacuum, and William Hoover jumped on board to save the project.

The first Hoover vacuum, the Hoover Model O, retailed in 1908 for $75, which is equivalent to a whopping $2,500 in today's money. Despite the cost and the fact that only around 10% of households had electricity, the Hoover was a huge success, just going to show how much people appreciate products that make life easier. Spangler stayed on as production supervisor, and vacuum cleaners improved from there. 

Nowadays, there are many popular vacuum brands to choose from, along with a variety of styles, from cordless to robot vacuums. Vacuuming has certainly come a long way.