ction system. The basic design is simple: On its way
through the cleaner, the air stream passes through a wider
area, which is positioned over a bucket. When it
reaches this larger area, the air stream slows down,
for the same reason that the air speeds up when flowing
through a narrow attachment. This drop in speed effectively
loosens the air's grip, so the liquid droplets and heavier
dirt particles can fall out of the air stream and into the
bucket. After you're done vacuuming, you simply dump out
whatever has collected in this bucket.
One type of wet-dry vacuum is the steam
cleaner. These vacuums dispense cleaning fluid onto the
carpet, massage it in, and then suck up the fluid along
One of the newest vacuum-cleaner variations is the
so-called "cyclone vacuum." This machine, developed in the
1980s by James Dyson, doesn't have a traditional bag or filter
system. Instead, it sends the air stream through one or more
cylinders, along a high-speed spiral path. This
motion works something like a clothes
dryer, a roller
coaster or a merry-go-round. As the air stream shoots
around in a spiral, all of the dirt particles experience a
powerful centrifugal force: They are whipped outward,
away from the air stream. In this way, the dirt is extracted
from the air without using any sort of filter. It simply
collects at the bottom of the cylinder.
The double cylinder dirt container in a
Hoover cyclone-type vacuum cleaner. As the air stream
spins around the edge of the cylinders, dirt is whipped
out so it collects at the
The cyclone system is a marked improvement on traditional
vacuum cleaners -- there are no bags to replace and the
suction doesn't decrease as you suck up more dirt. In the
future, we are sure to see more improvements on the basic
vacuum-cleaner design, with new suction mechanisms and
collection systems. But the basic idea, using a moving air
stream to pick up dirt and debris, is most likely here to stay
for some time.
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