Monday, July 25, 2011

Hoover



No, I know that one shouldn't call ANY vacuum cleaner a "hoover".   Indeed, chasing around on the internet, it seems that "hoover" isn't a generic name for a vacuum cleaner in the same way that it is in England - and that useful verb, "to hoover" - as in "I'm going to hoover the floor now" isn't operative here. Damn.   I thought how good it would be to write a post about hoovering on Hoover - even though, quite obviously, we own a Dyson (seen here as its material self, on the right; as a shadow; and reflected in the mirrors on the hall landing.   The Hoover - as in "vacuum cleaner" - was named after the person to whom James Spangler - invention of the rotating brush machine that we know today - sold his invention, since he, Spangler, didn't have the money to develop it back in 1907/8.   William Henry Hoover became very rich off it, but doesn't seem to have been any relative of Herbert Hoover, President 1929-1933, after whom Hoover St. - where we live - was almost certainly named.   At least, I suppose it was - J. Edgar Hoover, of the FBI, seems a less likely source of nomenclature.   But ... if this house was built in 1925, what, if anything, was this street called then?    

1 comment:

  1. "Hoover" sounds like an odd hypocorism to give a Vacuum cleaner.

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