The Hoover O was Hoover’s very first vacuum cleaner, brought out
in 1908. Murry Spangler was working as a caretaker, but all the
dust he was sweeping up irritated his asthma. He used a tin soap
box, a fan, a sateen pillow case and a broom handle to create an
invention which sucked the dust away from him. He sold the
patent of this device to his cousin’s husband, W. H. Hoover. Mr
Hoover owned and ran a leather crafting shop, but realised the
potential of this “suction sweeper” and hired six people to make
them in the corner of the shop. That is how it all began.
According to many sources, the main body of the Hoover O was
made of tin; however this doesn’t seem feasible to me. The
element of tin is not very strong at all and would have been
unlikely to have been used, and it is also very expensive.
However, one of the main advantages of tin is its ability to
fuse well with other metals to create alloys, such as bronze.
Bronze is an expensive metal though, so it would not have been
used to make a vacuum cleaner