As to the type of vacuum cleaner of the future, the author believes that these appliances will become standardized, just as all other useful appliances have been, and that the form that it will then take will be a survival of the fittest. What that form may resemble the reader may more readily judge when he has completed the reading of this book.
CHAPTER II.
Requirements of an Ideal Vacuum Cleaning System.
Before a comparison of the relative merits of any line of appliances, used for any one purpose, can be intelligently made, one must have either some form of that apparatus which we consider as a standard for comparison that we may rate all others as inferior or superior thereto, or else an ideal of a perfect system must be assumed, and the measures with which each of the various appliances approaches the requirements of the ideal will establish their relative merits.
The author has elected to use the latter method in comparing the various systems of vacuum cleaning, and it is necessary, therefore, to first determine what are the requirements we shall impose on the ideal system.
An ideal vacuum cleaning system would be one which, when installed in any building, will displace all appliances used for dry cleaning in the semi-annual renovating or house cleaning, the weekly cleaning or Friday sweeping and the daily supplemental cleaning. If our system be truly an ideal one, the premises should never become so dirty as to require any semi-annual cleaning at all, and, if the daily cleaning be anyway thorough, there need be no weekly cleaning. This latter condition may be governed by the will of the housekeeper or janitor.
The compressed air cleaners first introduced were intended for use only at the semi-annual cleaning and they were in reality carpet renovators, which were assumed as imparting to the carpets all the beneficial results that could be obtained by taking them up and sending them to a carpet-cleaning establishment, with the advantage over this latter method, that the labor of removal and replacement of the carpets was rendered unnecessary, but with the disadvantage that all the germ-laden air, used as a means of cleaning the carpets, was blown back into the apartment, leaving the germs in their former abode.
This disadvantage, however, is partly offset by the fact that while the majority of the germs in one’s own carpet are blown out at the carpet cleaners, a mixed company of germs from your neighbors’ and others’ carpets, which may be in the tumbling barrel at the same time with your own, are returned to you with your carpet.
Neither of these conditions is ideal and we will expect our ideal cleaner to completely remove from the premises, not only the dust and dirt, but also the germ-laden air which is used as a means of conveying this dirt.
For replacing the weekly and the daily cleaning, these earlier renovators were not suitable, as in order to use same the furniture must all be removed from the apartment.
To accomplish this daily and weekly cleaning, the ideal vacuum cleaner must replace the broom and dust pan, and their inseparable companion, the duster, and must also supersede that time-honored mechanical cleaner, the carpet sweeper.