Artifact Spotlight: The Doty Vacuum c.1900

Following the trend from last week’s artifact – and considering some of us are still waiting to get to Phase 1 of reopening in New York State, like us – this spotlight is on another household item: the vacuum.

While our feline friends and canine companions may not consider these items anything other than a nuisance, vacuums have developed into a commonplace item. The Roomba has gifted us with many amusing cat videos at least.

The history of the vacuum is tied with the development of the broom - as brooms became sturdier and therefore more effective cleaning tools, inventors in the late 1700s and early 1800s produced types of mechanical sweepers for streets, floors and carpets.

These manual systems of pulleys and cranks to rotate the brush and push dirt into a receptacle. The next step was the creation of vacuum cleaners with bellows. The first design of what we would recognize as a vacuum cleaner is the 1860 design by Daniel Hess, which incorporated a manually-operated bellows to create suction and raw in dirt.

This is an example of one such bellows-operated vacuum, created by the Ohio—based company, The Doty Manufacturing Company. This model was used in the early 1900s, ranging from c.1900 –1912.   The wheels powered a crankshaft as it was moved along the carpet/floor, which pushed rods connected to one or 2 bellows to produce continuous suction.

However, by 1913, manual devices were less popular thanks to the more efficient electric models that became available. For more rural areas that took longer to undergo electrification (into the 1930s), “The Doty” and similar models were lightweight and used into the 1940s.