Machines Using Root Blowers as Vacuum Producers.
—The use of a Root type of rotary pump as a vacuum producer was first undertaken by the Foster and Glidden Engineering Company, of Buffalo, which marketed the Acme system about 1907, the same company having previously built a similar system for the removal of grain from steam barges. The other features of this system did not differ materially from those already on the market.
Being familiar with the various uses to which this type of vacuum pump had been adapted, the principal one being the operation of pneumatic tube systems, the author suggested the use of this type of vacuum producer about two years previous to its introduction and was advised by one manufacturer that such a type of pump was not suitable for vacuum cleaning. The fallacy of this statement will be brought out in detail in a later chapter.
The type of vacuum producer just described has been adopted in many makes of vacuum cleaners, including the Hope, Connellsville, Arco, and, lately, in the American Rotary Valve Company’s smaller systems.
During the past four years a score or more of new stationary vacuum cleaning systems have been introduced, among which are the Palm, a modification of the Dunn-Locke system; the Tuec, a turbine cleaner; the Water Witch, which uses a water-operated turbine as a vacuum producer, and the Hydraulic, with water-operated ejector. At the same time a hundred or more portable vacuum cleaners have been marketed. These are of almost every conceivable type and form and are operated by hand, electricity, and water power. Among them will be found machines which are good, bad and indifferent, the efficiency and economy of which will be discussed in a later chapter.
This nearly universal invasion of the vacuum cleaner field by anybody and everybody looking for a good selling article, establishes the fact that the vacuum cleaner is not a fad or fancy, but has become almost a household necessity and has led large corporations to take it up as a branch of their business. First, the Sanitary Devices Manufacturing Company and the Vacuum Cleaner Company, the pioneers in the field, after a legal battle of years, consolidated with a view of driving their competitors from the field as infringers of the patents controlled by the two organizations. The result of this was the licensing of other companies. In an attempt to control the sale of their type of apparatus notice was served on all users of other types of vacuum cleaners that they were liable to prosecution for using infringing apparatus.
Later, the McCrum-Howell Company, a manufacturer of heating boilers and radiators, secured control of the products of the American Air Cleaning Company and the Vacuum Cleaner Company and sold these machines to the trade for installation by the plumbers and steam fitters. The McCrum-Howell Company has been succeeded by the Richmond Radiator Company, which is handling these vacuum cleaning machines.
Shortly afterwards, the United States Radiator Corporation secured control of the Invincible and the Connellsville systems, and, lastly, the American Radiator Company secured the Wand system.
Thus we see that vacuum cleaning seems to be virtually in the control of the manufacturers of heating apparatus, who are also among the largest corporations in this country and well able to control the future of this business to their liking.
As to the future of vacuum cleaning the author considers that it is at present, like the automobile, at the height of its career, and also, like the automobile, that it is a useful appliance to mankind and that it has its proper place as a part of the mechanical equipment of our modern buildings.