A little Japanese made 1950s tin plate and wire ‘electric’ doll house vacuum cleaner, donated to the Museum of Childhood Ireland in 2018. Research is ongoing.
As children in Dublin in the 60s, we called our carpet vacuum sweeper by the manufacturing company’s name, the Electrolux, and others called theirs the Hoover, in much the same way people today refer to their Dyson!
History Mechanical carpet sweepers made their debut in America during the mid-19th century. Carpet sweepers had a rotary brush connected to a pair of driving wheels. As the sweeper was pushed, the brush revolved, sweeping up and depositing dirt into a container that could be emptied easily. The United States Patent Office granted the first flurry of carpet sweeper patents in the late 1850s–five in 1858 and nine in 1859. Other patents would follow in the coming decades.
The McAllister Collection