Our small domestic appliances include a wide range of floor care products and advanced steam generator irons to suit every need. VISIT THE ONLINE STORE Our large domestic appliances are designed to make life easier wherever you are in the home. Looking for spares and accessories? Visit the officialHoover Spares Shop Need SupportWith Your HooverDomestic Appliance? Book an engineer or get thesupport you need from ourdedicated service website Find Your Nearest Stockist Hoover Air Steerable UH72400 vacuum cleaner This 14-pound upright from Hoover is bagless and has HEPA filtration, a brush on/off switch, and a 29-foot manual-wind cord.This is the very first Hoover, the “ Model O.” In 1907, James Murray Spangler, a janitor in a Canton, Ohio department store, concluded that the carpet sweeper and broom he used were the source of his asthmatic cough so he began to experiment with a better type of sweeping apparartus. He salvaged an old fan motor and attached it to a soap box affixed to a broom handle.

Using a pillow case as a dust collector on the contraption, Spangler invented a portable electric vacuum cleaner. He then improved his basic model -- the first to use both a cloth filter bag and cleaning attachments -- and received a patent in 1908. He formed the Electric Suction Sweeper Company. One of the first buyers was a cousin, whose husband, William H. Hoover, later became the president of the Hoover Company, with Spangler as superintendent. Sluggish sales were given a kick by Hoover�s 10 day, free home trial, and eventually there was a Hoover vacuum cleaner in nearly every home. The machine in this photo is from the Hoover Historical Center, not from my collection unfortunately. There are very few of these left, and they are quite rare and valuable. By the way, Murray Spangler’s “ suction sweeper” was the first [American] electric vacuum cleaner. Some accounts credit the Royal Company with this distinction, saying their cleaner was introduced in 1905.