Cleaning: Chemicals and Vacuum Cleaners

Chemicals. During the nineteenth century, rising standards of cleanliness, a new breed of domestic engineers, an increase in the number of objects people owned, and the emergence of the ‘‘germ theory’’ influenced the ideology and practice of cleaning. Still, throughout the twentieth century, people continued to clean with many of the same chemicals as had their predecessors in earlier centuries.

The distribution of piped hot water and electrical current contributed as much to a shift in cleaning practice as any change in the nature of chemicals. Twenty-two percent of British households lacked piped hot water as late as 1961. The impact of soaps and cleaning agents that require hot water for effective use must not be overestimated.

Before the twentieth century, many cleaning agents were made at home. While manufactured pastes, liquids and polishes were available by the early nineteenth century to those who could afford them, both the novelty and the effectiveness of these have been questioned. Soda played a significant role in housecleaning in the twentieth century, in part because it was cheaply and easily acquired after Frenchman Nicholas Leblanc developed an efficient way of mass producing it from salt in the late eighteenth century.

Historian Susan Strasser claims that only two cleaning agents were manufactured before 1880. Besides soda, twentieth century women continued to rely on sand, milk, salt, borax, camphor, lye, vinegar, turpentine, clay, acids, and oils.

The spread of dishwashing and laundry chemicals followed the introduction and mass manufacture of the dishwasher and washing machine, most prominently in Europe and North America after World War II. These products were often simply refinements of existing ones. Liquid soap was introduced by Minnetonka in the 1980s. In the latter three decades of the twentieth century, manufacturers responded to consumer concerns about the effect of their products on the natural environment. Chlorine, petrochemicals and phosphates were among the agents avoided in the new environmentally friendly cleaning products.

Vacuum Cleaners. The vacuum cleaner was a product of a desire for greater cleanliness and arguably one of the technologies that most abetted greater cleanliness. Along with the electric iron, the vacuum became one of most widely owned household appliances in the twentieth century. Historians agree, however, that the dissemination of the vacuum barely affected time spent in cleaning.

Yearly or bi-yearly outdoor carpet and curtain shakings were replaced by the daily or weekly use of the vacuum, as standards of cleanliness rose. The history of the vacuum cleaner remains ‘‘an important example of the commercial application of the phobia against dirt’’ (Forty, 1982).

The portable electric vacuum did not appear for sale until the first decade of the twentieth century. By the middle of the nineteenth century, portable appliances that sucked particles by means of bellows and others with both air draft and revolving brushes had been patented. Those who could afford to, sent their carpets out to be professionally cleaned. Steam-powered industrial machines simply beat the carpet with rubber beaters.

Later, machines employed steam to destroy insects and a rotary fan to blast dust out of the carpet and up a chimney. An American machine that blew compressed air through carpets inspired British civil engineer William Booths, who patented a ‘‘suction machine’’ in 1903. Booth’s ‘‘Puffing Billy,’’ which could be installed permanently in a building or mounted on a trolley and pulled by horses and automobiles, was exceptional among dozens of similar inventions in that it was the only one with a self-contained power source.

American David T. Kenney had developed a similar machine in the U.S., and its installation as a central vacuum in the Frick house in Manhattan set a precedent which was followed in both domestic and commercial applications. Central vacuums would not achieve widespread use, however, because their capital and installation costs were prohibitive. In addition, most American or European households had not been electrified at the time of its invention.

Chapman and Skinner in San Francisco invented the first ‘‘portable’’ electric vacuum in 1905. It weighed 42 kilograms and used a fan 45 centimeters in diameter to produce the suction. Because of its size, it did not sell well. By 1908 consumers could purchase the heavy (18 kilograms) but portable Hoover Model O Electric Suction Sweeper, for $75.00, a considerable sum at the time. It consisted of a tin body, filled with a fan, a motor and a rotating cylindrical brush. Behind the motor, a bag attached to the handle received the refuse.

This model included a flexible nozzle that could be fitted to the machine and used to vacuum upholstery. By 1926, the motor and parts were much lighter and a beating mechanism had been added to assist the brushes and suction. By this time, the machine was known simply as the ‘‘Hoover.’’ A second type of portable electric unit made by the Swedish Electrolux Company eliminated the rotating brushes from the design and used only suction. The Model O and the Electrolux provided the functional and design paradigms for vacuum cleaners until the end of the twentieth century.

Improvements and refinements through the end of the twentieth century included more efficient and quieter motors; lighter (and later recyclable) plastic parts; disposable dust bags; flexible cord winders (electrical cords that could be ‘‘sucked’’ back into a neat bundle); microfilters; and streamlined designs.

In 1979, Black and Decker Company introduced the cordless vacuum, the battery-operated and soon very popular ‘‘Dustbuster.’’ British designer and engineer James Dyson developed a bagless vacuum, which sucked and filtered dust into a plastic container that replaced the bags that Dyson claimed became clogged with dust and prevented efficient absorption. After marketing what became the fastest-selling vacuum in Britain, Dyson began working on a robotic vacuum.