Visvac — Vacuum Cleaner Specs Explained | visvac.com
Dated milestones that change how you read the wattage row on an old specification sheet.
In 1901, powered vacuum cleaners using suction were invented independently by British engineer Hubert Cecil Booth and American inventor David T. Kenney. The two inventions happened in the same year, in two countries, without coordination between the inventors.
The configuration list on today's sheets grew to include wet and dry vacuum cleaners, which accommodate both wet and dry soilage and proved useful in industrial plants and manufacturing facilities, alongside pneumatic and backpack models for mobility and compressed-air use.
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On the regulation side, the European Union first banned vacuum cleaner models above 1600 watts. The threshold then tightened: from 2017 no vacuum cleaner with a wattage greater than 900 watts was permitted in the EU.
Both limits apply to input power. When you find a wattage figure above 900 W on a specification sheet, the sheet is either pre-2017 or from outside the European Union, and the rest of its rows should be read with that date in mind.
The measurement units themselves — pascals or inches of water for suction, CFM for airflow, airwatts for output — are the stable part of the sheet. They did not change when the watt limits did, so a pre-2017 sheet and a current sheet can still be compared row by row once the wattage row is understood.
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