Hubert Cecil Booth

Hubert Cecil Booth (1871 to 1955) was an English civil engineer who invented the mechanically powered vacuum cleaner. He was born in Gloucester on 4 July 1871, the son of a lumber merchant, and in 1889 moved to London to study engineering at the City and Guilds College, after which he joined Maudslay, Sons and Field as a draughtsman helping to design engines for Royal Navy battleships. He designed bridges in Britain and overseas, together with big wheels for Paris, Vienna, Earl's Court and Blackpool. After seeing a railway car cleaning machine that blew dust across a carriage in 1900, he saw that a vacuum would work better, and on 30 August 1901 he received a British patent for a large horse-drawn, petrol-driven unit parked outside a building with long hoses fed through the windows. He later chaired the British Vacuum Cleaner and Engineering Company and died in Croydon on 14 January 1955.