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Hoover received through the years many awards and excellent reviews from professionals and consumers. One of the latest one is the second place in overall rankings on 10Rate.com editors and reviewers for the Top Ten Vacuums for 2012.
When he was working as a janitor in a department store in Canton, Ohio, James Murray Spangler invented a portable electric vacuum cleaner. It was an upright vacuum cleaner, and it used a cloth bag to collect the dirt . Spangler tested his invention in 1907 and patented it after modifications in 1908 before he founded the Electric Suction Sweeper Company to manufacture his design.
William Hoover was married to Spangler's first cousin, who purchased one of Spangler's models and Hoover invested in Spangler's company. He eventually became president of the Electric Suction Sweeper Company. In 1922, Hoover renamed the company the Hoover Company and lots of improvements were made in the design of the vacuum cleaner.
The Hoover Company's headquarters were located in North Canton, Ohio and stores were created to deal the products of the company, the dealer receiving a commission for each vacuum cleaner sold. In addition, customers were offered a free ten-day trial period to test the vacuum cleaner. This innovative marketing technique made the Hoover Company the largest vacuum cleaner manufacturer in the world.
During the same time, the company continued to develop innovative designs and additional attachments that made the vacuum cleaner even more appealing to consumers, like the first changeable bags for vacuum cleaners , the steam cleaners and the self-propelled vacuums.
Hoover also opened factories in different countries such as Canada in 1911 and in England in 1919.
During World War II, the Hoover Company switched its production from vacuum cleaners to items needed for the American war effort, such as helmet liners and bomb fuses and the war ended, the company returned to producing vacuum cleaners. Later in the 1940s, the company went from being privately owned to a publicly traded stock.
In 1985, the Chicago Pacific Corporation purchased the Hoover Company and then the Maytag Corporation acquired the Chicago Pacific Corporation in 1989. Today, Hoover has five plants: three still in the North Canton area , one in El Paso, Texas, and another in Juarez, Mexico.
