Object Details
- Book Title
- American homes and gardens.
- Caption
- The carpet swifter of merit.
- Educational Notes
- You may recognize the name Bissell from the vacuum cleaner in your home, but Bissell sweepers are the predecessors of the fancy vacuums of today. When Melville Bissell patented a machine to clean the sawdust off of his carpets, the Bissell sweeper was born. After Melville Bissell passed away in 1889, his wife Anna took over the company as the first female CEO in American history. Bissell became the largest exclusive carpet sweeper manufacturer in the world in the early 1900s, and even the Queen of England even requested that palace staff use Bissell sweepers. The Carpet Sweeper of Merit had wheels that spun on a ball-bearing to allow for quiet and effective cleaning. When the wheels spun, brushes underneath the sweeper picked up dust and dirt that was stored in a container under the sweeper. When electric motors were added to sweepers at the turn of the century, vacuum cleaners replaced sweepers as common household items, but the Bissell sweeper would continue to be known as the most effective cleaning machine of its time.
- 1900-1905
- Publication Date
- 1913
- Image ID
- SIL-americanhomesga101913newy_0262_crop
- Catalog ID
- 182094
- Rights
- Not in Copyright
- Type
- Prints
- Publication Place
- New York
- Publisher
- Munn and Co.
- See more items in
- See Wonder
- Smithsonian Libraries
- Topic
- Sweeper
- Vacuum
- Cleaning
- Inventions
- Household
- Language
- English
- Record ID
- silgoi_68370
