by Jane Furnival

 A Book Review by Dull Men’s Club Members

 Book available at:

 Amazon.com

     We were, at first, put off by the title of this book. The title had implications. But then we saw the subtitle, “The Gripping Story of the Vacuum Cleaner . . . .” That grabbed us. We bought the book. We began reading it. We couldn’t put it down until finished.

            We didn’t realize until reading this book how lucky we are -- vacuum cleaners nearly didn’t happen. Their inventory, Hubert Cecil Booth, almost choked to death on a mouthful of dust during an experiment in a London restaurant. Hubert was trying to demonstrate that a vacuum cleaner should suck, not blow. He had put his handkerchief on a plush chair, put his lips against it, and breathed in, with near-fatal results – he almost choked to death.

             That was 1901. Hubert, a fairground wheel engineer, had been excited by an American machine he’d seen that was intended to clean railway carriages. (Right there we know that Hubert was a Dull Man, right?) The machine consisted of a box with a bag on top. The machine blew air into carpets in the hope of getting the dust to fly out, bounce off the box, and into the bag. Booth asked the inventor he didn’t suck out the dust instead of blowing it. The inventor said that sucking dust was impossible.

            Hubert proved him wrong and went on to invent the first vacuum cleaner, The Puffing Billy.

            There’s also a chapter on the invention of the toasters.

Others books, referred to in this book, that we will be reading and review are:

  ·        The Origin of the Vacuum Cleaner, by H. Cecil Booth

  ·        From Mangle to Microwave – The Mechanization of Household Work, by Christina Hardyment

  ·        Victorian Inventions, by Leonard de Vries

THANK YOU FOR USING DULL VACUUM CLEANER