This is an rare Bellows style Vacuum Cleaner  from the early 1900s. Estimated Retail Value $Unknown.  Our price is $950.  

As the where turns at the base it moves a cog which moves a bellows up and down sucking in dirt.  This item is a museum quality piece and in 35 years of business I have never seen one before.   This one can be referred to as a Teeterboard"  as it works in a similiarr way.  Before the 1900's people still lived out on a farm and used a regular broom to keep the house clean.  Industrialization caused a interest for home cleanness and the first electric vacuum came about in 1907..  This is the year on this vacuum,    You don't see these very often and this one is a very rare one and in excellent condition.  This is a nice primitive that is very collectible.  

Call Holly Hill Antiques 804-695-1146 or call the comments line at GLO-Clips and tell us if you ever used one of these.  For more What is its - visit www.hollyhill.biz.  

 Apparently, several electricity-powered vacuum cleaners appeared at about the same time, just past the turn of the 20th century. Many of these early electric machines were simply earlier types of hand-pumped pneumatic machines to which electric motors were affixed to operate the leather bellows inside.

In 1900, a device called the “Teeterboard,” which consisted of a large board in a shape of a child’s teeter and a totter for one person to rock to generate suction as another person did the cleaning. “The Feeney Hand Pump,” was another invention that was operated by pushing a big cylinder up and down to activate bellows to draw dirt from floor. In 1917, the “Success Hand Vacuum” came out and it was run by holding on a handle above the vacuum bag that pumped up dirt while pushing with the other hand.

        Murray Spangler, an asthmatic, decided that there had to be a way to clean with less dust clouds.  Unlike the other cleaners, he added a rotating sweeping brush driven by a motor. Therefore, it was a portable suction sweeper. He used pillowcases to use as a dust catcher so that the dust would go in there and not the carpet.  He later turned his sales promotion to W. H. Hoover. A man named, Frank Mills Case of Cleveland redesigned the machine for Hoover with better and more efficient parts. The first Hoover vacuum cleaner weighed 10 pounds but by 1910, it only weighed five or six pounds. Later, Hoover’s son, H. W. Hoover, took after his father and he sold vacuum cleaners by demonstrating them to housewives.  http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/Engineering_Graphics

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