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Vacuum cleaner for a billion. History of James Dyson

As an engineer from England, after 15 years of trying, he made a breakthrough in the field of household appliances.

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How did the idea of ​​​​creating a new generation vacuum cleaner come about?

In the late 1970s, James Dyson purchased the most powerful vacuum cleaner on the market at the time, the Hoover Junior. At first, the device worked well, but soon the pores of the grid became clogged with dust, and it began to suck much weaker. The final disappointment was the dust bag, which simply broke.

What was bad for consumers was good for the industry. Customers had to constantly buy new bags. At the time, the market for consumables was valued at around £500m a year. Dyson was dissatisfied with the vacuum cleaner, but could not find anything better. Until one day I visited a local sawmill and noticed how sawdust is removed from the air using special industrial devices.

Engineering intuition did not let Dyson down - it was necessary to adapt such a device for home use. The British created a prototype that did not look very attractive, but it collected much more dust than a conventional vacuum cleaner. It took Dyson 15 years and 5,000 attempts to finally get a vacuum cleaner without a dust bag.

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In the section on the question Vacuum cleaner Dyson. Whose company ??? (what country is the brand?) given by the author Prosvira the best answer is The founder of the company, he is also its owner, an engineer and designer from England named James Dyson, really thought about the importance of creating a powerful and convenient vacuum cleaner back in the distant 1970s. He was annoyed by the then design of these devices, or rather, the presence of terribly uncomfortable and quickly clogged dust bags in them.
The level of cleaning depends on two main criteria. This is the maximum purity and minimum time consumption. It is thanks to the constant suction power that is present in every Dyson vacuum cleaner model that these criteria meet high quality. Having such an assistant of cleanliness in the house is not only prestigious, but also incredibly convenient. After all, the Dyson vacuum cleaner, reviews of which are positive, also has an additional number of advantages, such as: cleaning any type of surface; high-quality organization of the dust suction flow, which allows not to disperse the microparticles of dirt in the air; economical consumption of electricity; suction power does not depend on the duration of the device. More:

Answer from 22 answers[guru]

Hey! Here is a selection of topics with answers to your question: Vacuum cleaner Dyson. Whose company ??? (what country is the brand?)

Answer from Caucasian[newbie]
Malaysia
The founder and owner of Dyson, British engineer and designer James Dyson, first thought about creating a new type of vacuum cleaner in the late 1970s.
Dyson was terribly annoyed that the bags in his vacuum cleaner quickly clogged, and they had to be changed constantly.
In 1978, James Dyson had the idea to apply the cyclone principle to a vacuum cleaner.
As a result, in 1986, the first vacuum cleaner with a cyclone system was launched, which caught the smallest dust particles, keeping the suction force constant.
The essence of his invention is the unique Root Cyclone technology, which uses high centrifugal force to replace the traditional dust bag in all vacuum cleaners and provides constant suction power.
This technology, regardless of the amount of processed space, has tremendous speed and power.
Dyson vacuum cleaner range includes:
vacuum cleaners Dyson Origin,
vacuum cleaners Dyson Allergy,
vacuum cleaners Dyson Animal,
as well as the Dyson Slim vacuum cleaner and the Dyson All Floors vacuum cleaner.

James Dyson


PM editor-in-chief Alexander Grek (left), Mr. Dyson with his DC-08 vacuum cleaner (center) and editor Yevgeny Bogorad (right)

Dyson doesn't claim to have invented the iMac, but see for yourself: this fully transparent vacuum cleaner is a few years older than Apple's toy

50% of people prefer the "standing" vacuum cleaner DC-07

Especially for this machine, Dyson developed an artificial finger that pressed each button 10 thousand times.


Approximately this is how the water behaves in the "washer" Dyson

At the end of November, the great English inventor and designer James Dyson flew to Russia for a few hours.

The director of the London Design Museum is famous for inventing the modern bagless vacuum cleaner. At the same time, he managed to break a lot of established stereotypes - about mathematics as the basis for designing mechanisms, plastic as a fragile material, design as a beautiful shell and discoveries as the lot of geniuses. This and many other things were discussed with the legendary Englishman by the editors of Popular Mechanics (PM).

Who is he?

We will not retell the biography of the inventor in detail: how he studied - first design, then engineering, then traded the results of his inventions, selling the Sea Truck to the Egyptians and Israelis at the same time; how he came up with a garden cart with a ball instead of a wheel; how he was "thrown" by his partners, with whom he made and sold it.

In 1978, something broke in an old Hoover vacuum cleaner. Digging into the damaged mechanism, Dyson was amazed at the imperfection of the design. Trying to get rid of the dust bag, he made his first "cyclone" out of a box of corn flakes. Between this day and the moment of release of the first mass-produced vacuum cleaner of the Dyson brand, 15 years passed, during which 5127 (!) Prototypes were made.

The result was a mechanism, the principle of operation of which even modern aerodynamics describes very approximately.

The Dyson vacuum cleaner is remarkable in that it always sucks in air with constant force and absolutely nothing “spits out” back, unlike other vacuum cleaners. Why is this happening?

In conventional vacuum cleaners, air passes through a special bag where dust is filtered out and trapped. The trouble is that, firstly, not all dust is retained (ask asthmatics!), and secondly, after 10 minutes (that is, after “consuming” about 200 g of dust), the suction power of such vacuum cleaners drops by half. And continues to fall as the pores in the bag clog. And in a Dyson vacuum cleaner, the suction power does not fall. (See the sidebar for a detailed explanation of how the “double cyclone” works.) The principle of operation of the vacuum cleaner turned out to be so unusual that stores, fearing to scare off housewives, refused to use mentions in advertising that the air speed in the “outer cyclone” reaches 320 km / h, and in the internal, it is generally supersonic. To be honest, even now few people know about supersonic.

world of beautiful things

James Dyson would not have become a legend if he had only taught a vacuum cleaner to disperse dust to supersonic speeds. For example, he gave plastic a second life. As the Englishman told us, the material was actually killed by engineers who made flat things out of it, and in fact the fantastic strength of plastic is manifested only in rounded shapes. And the shapes of Dyson vacuum cleaners are what you need. And as a result, strength.

Once, when Dyson was not yet recognized on the streets, he came to a household appliance store where they sold his products and asked what kind of vacuum cleaner they would advise him. Some German was recommended. He asked: “But Dyson?” In response, he received a completely unexpected: “And he is very fragile!” Then Dyson introduced himself, called the manager and invited everyone to hit his offspring with a hammer. No matter how hard the staff tried, not a single crack appeared on the body of the vacuum cleaner. Well, the German shattered to smithereens.

Dyson transparent

The Dyson dust collector is not only plastic and durable, but completely transparent. Its creator was the first to proclaim that well-designed mechanisms are beautiful in themselves and do not unnecessarily hide them behind opaque casings - people like to look at them. It is now everywhere you can see transparent home electronics, mobile phones, Swiss watches (the so-called "skeletons"), and 15 years ago it was a revolution.

It is impossible to predict what associations this or that idea will cause in others. Dyson was once asked: “Is your transparent dust collector a tribute to postmodern design and, in particular, to the Center Pompidou in Paris, which was built by Richard Rogers?” “No,” Dyson replied, “the flask is transparent because you can immediately see if it’s time to clean it.”

The inventor was scared that the public would not buy such things for the house - they would be disgusted by looking at the dust. “What do they know, these advertisers and marketers,” says Dyson. Millions of cars sold clearly testify in favor of the correctness of the inventor's thought.

An unpleasant pile of dust that remains after all other vacuum cleaners, Dyson managed to make the basis of his advertising. This dust provoked endless lawsuits. For example, in France, Electrolux sued Dyson for this very reason. The French judge granted the claim, being too lazy to listen to the arguments. Then Dyson was invited by a popular comedy program in France to show the very dust that no one can see.

Of course, it was not so much the scandal that “sold” Dyson vacuum cleaners, but the very subject of engineering art. No wonder it is exhibited in almost all world design museums. And James Dyson himself in 1999 was appointed director of the Design Museum in London.

Big business is done by ordinary people

Even Dyson built his business in a completely different way, as is customary. For example, any of his employees - from a mechanic to a sales director - must assemble a vacuum cleaner with his own hands on the first day at work. This is done so that each employee of the company knows exactly how it works that they all create together. After that, the worker is given a vacuum cleaner to use at home. But there is no free cheese: if you like the vacuum cleaner, you will have to pay 20 pounds for it.

Designers sit in the same room as engineers. This was done on purpose: they are constantly in contact when creating a product. Joint creativity is also helped by the complete absence of walls and cabinets in the main working hall.

Each employee can submit an idea. For example, Jackie's secretary suggested putting the helpdesk phone number right on the handle of the vacuum cleaner.

The company never distributes memos: they create alienation in the team, says Dyson. If he has something to say, he speaks to the employees himself.

The cafe is a different story. Once Dyson came across an antique shop, which at the same time was also a gourmet restaurant. He talked to the hostess and found out that most antique dealers (at least in England and France - he did not say anything about Russia) were big gourmets. Thus the idea was born to involve gourmet antique dealers in the establishment of a café at Dyson's main facility. This restaurant is nothing like the usual factory canteens. There, all the food is healthy food, mostly Mediterranean. These are fruit salads, and eggplant in croutons, and steam fish, and violet salad, and fresh cheeses, and carrot-orange soup, and much more.

But no fried fish and chips. The first few weeks, new employees are usually surprised, but then they get used to it and become apologists for healthy eating. And they start to look better.

Otherness is a quality that Dyson cultivates in his employees. Out of the box thinking is the basis of the whole process. He does not like geniuses: firstly, they are hard to find, and secondly, they are usually overpriced. And all the rest are ordinary people, each of whom can come up with a wonderful idea. Therefore, Dyson recruits graduates who are not yet spoiled by work in ordinary companies and are receptive to sound ideas. By the way, Bill Gates does the same and for the same reason.

All this sounds like ideas from some optimistic textbook, right?

Handwash

Few people know about the Dyson vacuum cleaner. And very few have heard that he also invented a washing machine. It would seem that what's new can be done with a washing machine?

But that's what young Dyson was told when he was trying to realize the idea of ​​his vacuum cleaner! “If such a method existed, surely Electrolux or Hoover would have thought of this before!” These are the words the inventor heard most often in his life.

Dyson noticed that hand washing is much more efficient than machine washing: it takes less time, and the result is much better. Research began, as a result of which it turned out that when washing by hand, the structure of the fabric is subject to much more sophisticated loads than in a traditional washing machine. Then Dyson came up with the "contrarotator".

If the drum of an ordinary washing machine is cut across into two cylinders and twisted in different directions, then turbulences will appear inside, very similar to the movement of water during hand washing. In the Dyson machine, this is done: the drums spin in different directions, each at a speed of 1400 rpm. The result is impressive: the machine washes four times faster than usual. The only thing we did not understand and asked the inventor about when we met was why the machine is opaque, why the inventor cheated on himself. The answer turned out to be simple: at the time of its creation, there was no transparent material that would be strong enough, dampen vibrations and be waterproof.

But now such fantastic material has been found and the feasibility of producing such a machine is being discussed.

And other home appliances

We knew about the Dyson robot vacuum cleaner, but we could not see it: the device is in the “home testing” stage. This means that Dyson's employees go to the houses of the British and offer to use the miracle of technology for a while. The subjects are then asked about what problems they encountered and what they would like from such a vacuum cleaner. And although Dyson was suspiciously taciturn on this topic, we still managed to find out that, unlike brothers from iRobot and Electolux (which PM wrote about in December), Dyson's robot is a full-fledged vacuum cleaner, with and without a "double cyclone" power compromises. But with the most interesting - navigation systems - everything seems to be just as imperfect there. No, he is not as stupid as the American miracle, and he is better oriented than the Trilobite. We just expected something revolutionary from Dyson. The robo-vacuum cleaner, on the other hand, simply honestly builds a floor plan and cleans all the rooms located on the same floor, never going through the same place twice (but a person does this all the time, forgetting where he has already walked with a brush).

We also asked which of the household appliances is the most difficult to automate. “Iron,” Mr. Dyson puzzled us with his answer. “The hardest part is the ironing robot.” As for domestic robots in general, our idea of ​​them was shaped to a large extent by writers whose imagination was so poor that they did not foresee computers and, most importantly, computer networks (only Clark can boast of having foreseen the Internet). As a result, the need for moving robots has disappeared. Now robots are just elements of a home computer system: something catches the smoke, something turns on the radio. Mutual “communication” of familiar home appliances will become very important.

Earn billions in dust. History of inventor James Dyson

You can make good money on the extraction of gold or oil, but on the dust? ... Briton James Dyson proved: yes, no problem. Although no, there were problems, and a lot. Let's figure out how he managed to achieve his goal, despite all the mistakes - there were at least 5126 of them. This is the number Dyson mentions when he talks about the unsuccessful designs of his first vacuum cleaner.

Dyson asks for money

James Dyson was born in 1947 in the UK into a family of teachers. His father died early from cancer - then the future inventor was only nine years old. They say that the boy was very worried about the loss of a person who can be equal to, becoming a man. However, being the youngest of three children, he got what he wanted: the mother allowed the offspring almost everything. "In this I was lucky"- once admitted the Briton.

School years passed unnoticed, the boy studied at prestigious educational institutions, going immediately after school to learn the basics of art and design. Today, the beginning of his career looks cloudless and full of optimism.

During this period, Dyson became acquainted with the work of the American architect Buckminster Fuller. "They were crazy, but they seemed so inspiring" James shares his impressions.

Fuller's designs had an impact on the future of the young Briton - it is quite difficult to look at the world from an unusual angle, but not everyone becomes an inventor. James was so imbued with what he saw that he decided to design something similar. For help in financing, young Dyson went to the engineer Jeremy Fry, whom he met in college. In addition, Fry served as Chairman of the Rotork Board of Directors.

The engineer did not give money, but offered Dyson a part-time job in his company. Here, James was given the task of working on the Sea Truck project, a high-speed amphibian for transporting goods. They built a prototype together, and then Fry, according to Dyson, simply pointed him to the welding machine and offered to assemble the boat.

“I never did it, but I did it. He allowed me to learn from my own mistakes. After assembling the prototype, I asked: “So what next?” Fry voiced a banal plan: to establish production and sell Sea Truck. Today this story is filled with romanticism, but in the 70s it was the graduation project of a future graduate. Very successful, since at first 200 amphibians were sold per year, and then they simply stopped counting.

Suddenly the idea came - to create your own vacuum cleaner

Getting back on his feet, James Dyson decided to develop a vacuum cleaner. No, of course, he did not wake up one morning and thought: "Ha! Why don't I conquer the universe? I'll start by creating a vacuum cleaner!

It all started with a bad purchase. In 1979, he bought the most powerful home vacuum cleaner available, but soon became disillusioned: instead of sucking up dust, it only dispersed it around the house, says the first legend. According to another, Dyson is simply tired of changing dust bags that are never at hand. The third calls 1978 the starting point - the inventor was dissatisfied with the work of the treatment systems in his own "home" factory and wanted to do something.

Familiar with the design of "cyclone" type air cleaners in sawmills, James decided that a similar principle could be implemented in a home vacuum cleaner - it would not lose suction power when the dust bag was full. Soon a prototype appeared, which proved that the solution worked. By that time, the Briton was finalizing his other invention - a garden cart with a sphere instead of a wheel. “I already found investors willing to support the first project, but no one was willing to finance the creation of a vacuum cleaner,” Dyson said.

Then the engineer decided to develop the idea, relying only on his own resources. This determination cost him dearly, debts grew by leaps and bounds. “I was lucky to have a wife who supported me without looking back. I didn't care about bankruptcy - with my hands and head I wouldn't be lost, but I was afraid of losing my house. My wife at that time was selling paintings and teaching art. And we all occupied, occupied and occupied ... I had to grow vegetables on my own, my wife sewed clothes for the children, ”- James recalls difficult times (and Deirdre accompanies her husband to this day).

Nothing works

He admits that he considered himself a good entrepreneur, but this did not help him much with the promotion of a new direction. However, the passion for the idea of ​​a breakthrough product moved Dyson further. Attempts to reach the manufacturers of the vacuum cleaner ended in nothing. Sometimes future competitors showed interest, but then backed off, sometimes the door was closed in front of Dyson without voicing reasons. “Often it seemed to me that they were simply not interested in progress.” There was also such an explanation: vacuum cleaner manufacturers earned tens of millions by selling replaceable bags for their equipment. And in 1984, Amway Corporation signed a licensing agreement.

It seemed that here it is - gone! Six months later, it was withdrawn, and James was asked to return all the money paid. Catastrophe.

Japanese pink vacuum cleaner

In 1986, an attempt was made to collaborate with a small Japanese company, Apex. A niche and expensive ($2000) pink G-force was born. And again, sources disagree: some argue that the partnership with the Japanese brought disappointment, others call it very successful and allowed them to raise money for the full development of the future Dyson Ltd. Moreover, different dates for the release of the product on the Japanese market are announced - both 1983 and 1986.

As for 1983, we are probably talking about Dyson's collaboration with his former employer, Rotork. Then about 500 vacuum cleaners of another model were sold.

At the same time, everyone agrees that the number of prototypes created by Dyson was 5126 pieces. Such a number does not fit in my head, but we will not exclude such a possibility.

In the early 90s, the engineer decided to start production himself (before that, third-party companies licensed the technology), but he was faced with the fact that some enterprises, including Amway, were already using his technologies. Litigation followed, during which Dyson won the rights to patents. Successfully, but not for the last time.


Need a million dollars

Getting the money turned out to be a difficult task: no one wanted to deal with the British "upstart". With great difficulty, in 1993, the entrepreneur nevertheless managed, with the participation of his banking agent, to knock out a loan of about a million dollars (900 thousand, according to other sources), mortgaging the house.

Production was launched, and Dyson began selling vacuum cleaners, hitting mail-order catalogs. Gradually their number grew. In 1995 the former Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary Richard Edward Geoffrey Howe visited the factory. “He asked me if there were any problems. I complained that I could not get into the Comet network, our analogue of BestBuy. It was the turn of family ties, and the next day Dyson spoke with the director of purchasing of this network. Over the next year, the Dyson vacuum cleaner became the best-selling in the UK.


Not everything Dyson comes up with works.

But not all Dyson products were commercially successful. One of the failures was the release of the Contrarotator washing machine. She was criticized for the high price - twice as high as the competition. Yes, a big drum, but this is not a very noticeable advantage. “Failure is an interesting phenomenon, without which there can be no progress. You can't learn something from success, but you can't learn from failure.", Dyson said in an interview in 2012. Even a series of failures, according to him, should not be discouraged. “Moreover, you have to enjoy it.”- added by that time a very successful businessman.

“When Dyson introduced Dual Cyclone technology to vacuum cleaners in 1993, Which? wrote: competitors twice cheaper work better. In 1996, the same magazine named the Dyson DC01 vacuum cleaner “recommended for purchase” ”, a spokesman for the company said in response.

Disputes led to nothing, and soon Dyson was forced to discontinue production of the Contrarotator due to too high production costs. There were probably other examples as well.

Entering the American market

In 2002, the British company began to intervene in the American market and three years later took 20%. Even before the explosion, a BestBuy employee allegedly bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner and told her boss two weeks later that it actually worked. The new cleaning machine immediately took the best places in the trading floors…

Sir James Dyson is a typical example of a brilliant inventor who built a business through innovative developments. Dyson doesn't do a lot of advertising, doesn't run powerful PR campaigns. And in general, all its activities are centered around development and production. Production of somewhat revolutionary products.

Today, Dyson cyclonic vacuum cleaners are widely known around the world and are the undisputed leaders in sales among flask vacuum cleaners. The highest filtration rates and the absence of consumables in determined the direction of the development of the whole market of cleaning devices, but this was not always the case ...

In 1978, the English engineer and designer James Dyson's vacuum cleaner broke down. Trying to fix it, Dyson was struck by the imperfection of the design. The dust bag gradually clogged, nullifying the operation of the device - most of the power wasted in vain. Trying to get rid of the dust bag, Dyson came up with a centrifugal design - the air moves in a spiral, and the centrifugal force separates dirt and dust from it. Right there, from a box of corn flakes, he made his first cyclone vacuum cleaner. Between this day and the moment of the release of the first mass-produced vacuum cleaner of the Dyson brand, 15 years passed, during which 5127 prototypes were made. A simple idea turned out to be extremely difficult to implement.

The result is an absolutely wonderful vacuum cleaner that sucks in air with constant force and absolutely nothing “spits out” back. Unlike traditional vacuum cleaners with a bag, in which after 10 minutes of operation (200 g of dust) the suction power drops by half and continues to fall further as the tank fills up.

But James could not sell his development to at least some company, and even more so to the store. The reason was obvious. At that time, vacuum cleaner dust bags were an important source of income for these companies (sales in the UK were over 100 million pounds, and worldwide exceeded a billion dollars a year). No one wants to kill the goose that lays golden eggs, and no one needs a perpetual motion machine. Making a profit got in the way of progress.

The first development of James became interested in Japan. Japan is a country where technological innovations are constantly introduced. In 1986, a small Japanese company acquires a license to manufacture G-Force vacuum cleaners in their country. At a price of £2,000, sales exceeded all expectations, and royalties brought seed money to James Dyson, with which he opened production in the UK, naming the company Dyson.

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