#32: The Carpet Sweeper

This photograph shows the one and only carpet sweeper in existence today. What is a carpet sweeper? That’s a good question. This 1860 invention by Daniel Hess never quite caught on. Thankfully, a museum has this relic of the past to show an early version of what would eventually become the vacuum.

Carpets became more common and affordable during the Industrial Revolution. As we all know today, carpet is much harder to clean than bare wood floors. It’s for this reason that Daniel Hess invented the carpet sweeper. His patented machine used bellows to create suction, sucking up dust and dirt from carpets. Unfortunately, this thing was huge, heavy, and really hard to operate. That’s probably why there’s only one in existence.