Hubert Cecil Booth, a British engineer, received a British patent for a vacuum cleaner on august 30th 1901. This unwieldy machine took the form of a large, horse-drawn, petrol-driven unit which was parked outside the building to be cleaned with long hoses being fed through the windows.
James Murray Spangler, a janitor in an Ohio department store, realized that the carpet sweeper he used was creating his cough. He found an old fan motor, and attached it to a soapbox stapled to a broom handle. Using a pillowcase a dust collector on the contraption, Spangler invented a portable electric vacuum cleaner in 1907. He then improved his basic model first to use both a cloth filter bag and cleaning attachment. He received a patent for his invention in 1908, and formed the Electric Suction Sweeper Company. One of his first buyers was a cousin whose husband, William H. Hoover, later became the president of Hoover Company which made vacuum cleaners, with Spangler as superintendent. William Hoover began to make electric cleaners in 1908.
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