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Daniel Hess
Daniel Hess was the first person to get a patent for a carpet sweeper in 1860. He lived in Iowa. His machine wasn't really a vacuum cleaner. However, it preceeded the actual vacuum cleaners we know today. It had a rotating brush and bellows to suction up dirt and dust. It had to be hand operated. -
Ives McGaffery
Ives McGaffery was an inventor in Chicago. He got a patent for a machine called the sweeping machine named the "Whirlwind". The device cleaned rugs, but the important part was that there was no motor. It was a hand cranked device while just pushing it against the floor. Most of these were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire but there are two left in the museums. -
John Thurman
In 1899, John Thurman started a horse drawn vacuum system. It had a gasoline powered engine. He offered door to door service in St Louis that cost $4.00 per visit. Thurman got a patent on his machine October 3, 1899. -
Hurbert Booth
A British engineer named Herbert Cecil Booth got a patent for a motorized vacuum cleaner on August 30, 1901. It was not the vacuum cleaner we know today. Rather, it was a large, horse-drawn vehicle that had a motor that was gasoline driven. It would be parked outside a building, and long horses would suck out the dirt from a building being cleaned. -
James Spangler, Inventor of Vacuum Cleaner
In 1907, James Murray Spangler, a janitor from Ohio could not stand dust. He invented the first portable vacuum cleaner that had a suction, a fan, a motor, and a dust bag. He got patented on June 2, 1908. Spangler is often cited as the inventor of the modern day vacuum cleaner. He did not have enough money to manufacture the machine himself. That made Spangler sell his invention to his wife's cousin, William Henry Hoover. They had a success!
