By Mary Robinson Sive - Garden State Legacygardenstatelegacy.com/files/David_T_Kenney_Sive_GSL8.pdf · Johnston Avenue in North Plainfield’s Netherwood section as well as other

By Mary Robinson Sive

How could it be that a woman used avacuum cleaner when her town didn’thave electricity until 10 years later? Yet,

this was what I read in a rural woman’s diaryfrom 1911. Not a carpet sweeper—that was mentioned earlier. Did she and her hus-band perhaps have a generator? Possibly—but wouldn’t she have recorded such a sig-nificant step in her diary that seemed to omitno detail?

It was a puzzle, and I was determined tosolve it. From reference books, the Internet,and fellow history buffs I learned about theexistence of manual vacuum cleaners beforeelectric ones. Women in their 70s and 80swho had grown up on farms rememberedsuch appliances.

This should not have been surprising.After all, 90% of farms in the United States—5 million farms—were without electric serviceas late as the mid-1930s. It was only afterWorld War II that a majority would enjoy suchpower. So there was a sizeable market for anappliance that promised country women thatthey could keep up with the kinds of modernconveniences enjoyed in cities.

Eventually, I got to examine two manualvacuum cleaners in the possession of a small

historical museum and learned of others inother small local institutions. But why didimportant collections of American home lifenot own examples? Why was there only onesuch object at the Smithsonian? Why werethere so many discrepancies in the fewbooks on American social and cultural—andwomen’s—history that even mentioned vac-uum cleaners?

A twisting trail led to answers to thesequestions. And the trail kept turning up aname that was also new: David T. Kenneyof Plainfield, New Jersey. In 1910 The NewYork Times had called him the “father of thevacuum-cleaner industry.”

The New Jersey inventor is little remem-bered today. Some reference books dismisshim as a “New Jersey plumber” when theymention him at all. Yet both hand-operatedmachines and later electric ones weredependent on his patents. These expired inthe early 1920s at approximately the sametime as electric units substantially replacedthe manual ones—and the same time asKenney’s death by suicide at age 56.

Kenney would be totally forgotten todayhad he not been a prominent Catholic lay-man. He donated land for the construction

David T. Kenney: Forgotten NJ Inventor Mary Robinson Sive GardenStateLegacy.com Issue 8 June 2010

of a girls’ school. in Watchung by the Sistersof Mercy. Mt. St. Mary Academy continuestoday as a prep school, and its archives pre-serve papers pertaining to him.

Here is the story of this forgotten NewJersey native.

Keney’s Early CareerBorn to Irish immigrants on a

Whitehouse, NJ, farm in 1866, DavidKenney at age 15 was apprenticed to aplumber, and ten years later began his ownplumbing business in Plainfield. His firstinventions, in the 1890s, were for water-

closets (tanks for flush toilets) that he soldas a “flushometer.” Enjoying an incomefrom their manufacture and sale, he soonjoined the many inventors seeking to mech-anize housecleaning.

Mechanical CleaningMechanical cleaning devices had begun

to engage the attention of inventors in thelatter portion of the 19th century, a periodwhen carpets and upholstered furniturecame into more common use at the sametime as hygiene was an increasing concern.Suctioning dust out of a carpet into a closed


container would obviously be more sanitarythan beating the carpet, as was customarybut only spread the dust around. At leasttwo dozen British and American patentsfrom the 1850s on, as well as French and German ones, arose out of such con-cerns, some of them suggesting the use ofhand-operated bellows or pulleys, othersemploying steam power or gasoline, andeven electricity.

Vacuum Cleaner PatentsKenney filed his first application for a

cleaning device, mounted on wheels, in1901, calling it an “Apparatus for RemovingDust.” This patent was not granted until1907 though he obtained another one,applied for later, for a “Separator forApparatus for Removing Dust” in 1903.While pursuing these patents, he installed a4,000-lb. steam engine in the basement ofthe Frick Building in Pittsburgh. It hadattached to it pipes and hoses that reachedinto each part of the building to suck out dust.

About the same time the English engi-neer, H. Cecil Booth, demonstrated that suc-tion could remove dust embedded inupholstered furniture and probably in car-pets as well. The frequently told account ofhis experiment has him placing a freshlylaundered handkerchief on a plush chairand placing his mouth on it. “I was almostchoked,” he later wrote, when he sucked in air and a large amount of dust settled onthe back of the handkerchief. Booth builtand marketed a power-driven machine,coining the term “vacuum cleaner.” Heapplied for a United States patent in 1902,two months after Kenney’s first filing for acleaning patent.

The New Jersey man attended a demon-strationof the English cleaner and after pur-chasing a unit bought out Booth’s U.S.patent application. Once Kenney had the1907 patent in hand, the Booth applicationlapsed. Finding himself bested by a self-educated man did not sit well with that gen-tleman, as revealed in a protest published ina trade journal by Booth’s British Vacuum


Cleaner Company many years later.The U.S. Patent Office was quite

swamped with inventions employing vacu-um technology during those early years ofthe 20th century. Vacuum apparatus, vacuumcleaner for carpets, vacuum cleaning appa-ratus, vacuum cleaning device, vacuumcleaning implement, vacuum cleaningmachine, vacuum cleaning systems, vacuumcleaning tool, vacuum dust-remover, vacu-um pan, vacuum producing apparatus,vacuum-producing device, vacuum-sweeper, and similar terms fill manycolumns in annual indexes to patents grant-ed during these years. Portable units, sta-tionary ones, and some that were motor-driven were envisaged. (Only stationaryinstallation for an entire building was prac-tical for motor-driven units until electricmotors small enough for portable machineswere available).

That it took over five years for Kenney’s1901 application to be granted was due toits having at first been rejected by the patentexaminer and only being approved onappeal. His five patent applications filed

from 1904 to 1906 provided for refinementssuch as improved nozzles, and implementssuitable for uneven surfaces, an improveddry separator, and a transparent chamberallowing for the observation of dust deposit-ed in water, all of them referring to operat-ing equipment attached to a central system.When portable vacuum cleaners began todominate the market, he succeeded in hav-ing his patents deemed applicable to theirmanufacture as well, as we shall see.

The Vacuum Cleaner CompanyKenney acquired important customers for

his central vacuuming systems. By 1906 dis-play ads in popular magazines by theVacuum Cleaner Company, 427 Fifth Avenue,New York (“David T. Kenney, Pres’t”)showed an electric central vacuum cleaningsystem located in a basement with hosesreaching into various rooms, said to be in usein the White House, the New York TimesBuilding, and elsewhere. He had incorporat-ed this company in 1903 and assigned hissubsequent patents to it. A building con-structed in 1906 on North Avenue near


Johnston Avenue in North Plainfield’sNetherwood section as well as other locationshoused its manufacturing operations.

Kenney’s company was chosen to installthe central vacuum operation in the cele-brated Singer building at Broadway andLiberty Streets in New York, at the time ofits 1908 completion the world’s tallest officestructure. The building actually containedtwo vacuum systems, one for general clean-ing, the other for use by tenants duringoffice hours, a unique rental feature accord-ing to the chief engineer. “Hat and coat ren-ovators” were included.

The Vacuum Cleaner Company wasreported to have “portablecleaning apparatus inBoston, Philadelphia,Pittsburgh, Chicago, and St.Louis” but to be in receiver-ship just two weeks aftercompletion of the Singerbuilding. The “portablecleaning apparatus” presum-ably was similar to that pic-tured in the company’s 1906patent application, i.e. oper-ators and equipment sent outto a customer’s location. HisJersey Vacuum CleanerCompany, located at 129Brunswick Street, Newark,offered central installationsand “portable service,” warning, “Do notallow the use of the dangerous broom!”

The U.S. Treasury Department was amongthe institutions that chose Kenney productsfor installation in a new building in 1913.

Between 1905 and 1907 the companygrossed over $800,000 according to a 1915case, leading the judge to call Kenney “almostthe story book inventor,” having allegedlybegun with $500 in 1901. The following year,in another case, the same judge reiterated“that Kenney founded the modern art of vac-uum cleaning.”

LitigationKenney would not have enjoyed such

success had he not been a shrewd businessman in a highly competitive environment aswell as a skillful inventor. He understoodthat the future of his inventions lay in thelegal system as much as at the workbenchand early on chose noted patent attorneyThomas Ewing, who later served as U.S.Commissioner of Patents under PresidentWilson, to represent him.

No newcomer to the courts, Kenney hadwon an 1899 action and a 1905 infringementsuit over one of his water-closet patents.Many years of contention over patent rights

followed Kenney’s receivinghis “fundamental” vacuumcleaner patent in 1907, withhim prevailing in almost all ofthem. The suits revolvedaround the exact dimensionsof nozzles (“renovators”)used by his competitors, andin each case upheld “thevalue of a narrow slot whichcould be readily moved with-out sticking to the carpet, orcausing abrasions of the car-pet, and of a sealing contact.”Defendants relied on variousearlier patents, but judges,often impressed by the plain-tiff’s self-made status and suc-

cess, found those claims of no relevance.Nearly every case resulted in the defendantpaying license fees to the Vacuum CleanerCompany, which took in over a quarter mil-lion dollars in such fees between 1909 and1915, according to testimony in a 1915 case.The company morphed from manufacturingto patent-holding.

Industry ControlBy 1909 the public could choose from

over a dozen stationary vacuuming systemsand over one hundred portable cleaners.


Consolidation and attempts to achieve control through trust agreements were theorder of the day in many industries, and aneffort was made (by someone else) to con-solidate the vacuum-cleaning industry. Thisfailed in 1912, but Kenney before long man-aged to achieve a commanding position inthe industry.

In 1911 seven companies attempted tofight Kenney’s patents but the next yearagreed to accept licenses at 2–1/2%. Twoyears later eleven firms formed a VacuumCleaner Manufacturers Association. It and asimilar attempt in 1916 failed to survivebecause not all Kenneylicensees were mem-bers. Finally, in 1919some 20 companies,representing manufac-turers of both portableand stationary equip-ment, formed a tradeassociation, in effectlimited to holders ofKenney patents sincethey “are the basicvacuum-cleaner patentsthat have been litigatedand upheld by thecourts.” The patentsexpired in the 1920s,and by then sales of vac-uum cleaners reachedover a million units,most undoubtedlyelectric.

James Murray Spangler’s 1908 patent forcombining a small electric motor with acloth bag to contain the suctioned dust wasthe first step in the emergence of theportable vacuum cleaner. William HenryHoover purchased the patent, and his pro-motion succeeded so wildly that in theBritish Isles the household chore is knownas “hoovering.” That Kenney’s patent was asapplicable to hand-held cleaners as to cen-

tral systems was the finding of a 1916appeals court ruling. The growth of “thecommercial vacuum cleaner art” and “thatKenney . . . was the founder of the presentvacuum cleaner commercial art” wasremarked on in 1915 by the judge in one ofKenney’s lawsuits.

Manual Vacuum CleanersHoover’s vacuum cleaners were no help

outside large cities since few communitieswere served by electric power. Anyone liv-ing on a farm or in a small town who hopedto clean in a modern manner had to use a

vacuum cleaner operat-ed by hand. And thatvacuum had to use thenozzle and other devicespatented by Kenney.

Sears Roebuck offeredmanually operated man-ual vacuum cleanersbeginning with the Fall1909 catalog. They wereof three types andweighed as much as 50lbs., one of them requir-ing two people to oper-ate it. The smallestmodel functioned some-what like a bicycle pumpin reverse. The singleoperator pushed thehandle down a tube.When it was pulledback, dust came up with

it and into a “receptacle” that could be emp-tied as needed. As a consequence it wasoperational only half the time, but its weightof only 5 lbs. made this plunger-type themost popular. The majority of survivingmanual vacuums are of this type. TheSpring 1910 Sears catalog had remindedreaders that “You need a vacuum” to savetime and labor and to promote health.“Protect the health of your family” had also


been an admonition of Kenney’s JerseyVacuum Cleaner Company.

We may well wonder how many manu-al vacuums saw actual use. My informantswho grew up in farm homes in the 1920sand 1930s remembered seeing them butdidn’t actually remember their mothers everusing them much. Wordmay have got around thatthey weren’t really “labor-saving devices” since fewcompanies still offeredthem after 1916, Sears dis-continuing them by 1920.

Electric HouseholdVacuum CleanersOnce portable electricalvacuum cleaners for use inprivate homes were practi-cal—thanks to Hoover—they became“ordinaryhousehold implements,” asthe 1911 EncyclopediaBritannica noted. Vacuumcleaner sales in the UnitedStates more than doubledbetween 1916 and 1918,going from 11,756 to24,451. In 1920 1,024,167units were sold for a total of$35 million, most undoubt-edly electric. The industryfor whose growth Kenney was given somuch credit by his contemporaries waswell-established.

In 1910 Good Housekeeping magazinehad wondered “Do vacuum cleaners clean?”The magazine was not quite sure, and whenits staff tested a unit a few years later, itfound that it was “not for a delicatewoman”—not surprising for those 50-lb.manually operated machines. By 1921 allthat had changed. Many electric modelswere on the market, including importedones, and when the magazine ran a ques-

tionnaire its readers unanimously endorsedvacuum cleaners.

Kenney’s Civic InvolvementDuring the long wait for the 1907 patent

Kenney asked the Sisters of Mercy, an orderof Catholic nuns who were his daughter’s

teachers, to pray for him.His gift of land enabledMt. St. Mary’s College,founded by the order in1873, to move fromBordentown to aWatchung mountain sitenear his manufacturingoperations. His donationsbeginning in 1905 andcontinuing to the end ofhis life totaled over 70acres. He took an activepart in the planning of thebuildings for the school,which opened in 1908with elementary and sec-ondary classes andincluded seven girls in acollege department.Kenney’s generosityresulted in his beingmade a PapalChamberlain by PopePius X in 1906.

The income from hisvarious patents enabled Kenney to pursueother business interests, including realestate. The Kenney home was located in anupscale section though he later moved to ahotel. He served on the boards of a hospi-tal and of the Rahway Reformatory in NewJersey. In 1915 he with his wife and daugh-ter gave a dance for a debutante, a possibleclue to social ambitions in New York City.

Kenney’s DeathThe industry with which he had been iden-tified for so long being well-established,


Kenney turned his inventive skills to yetanother field, receiving his last patent, for aheating system designed to improve the dis-tribution of heat from a wood-burning fireplace, in 1920. In May 1922 his body wasfound near Beacon, NY, after he had beenmissing about ten days. He had been in illhealth for some years and had recently losthis wife and a sister.

History’s NeglectManual vacuum cleaners are described infew books dealing with home life or home-making during the pre-World War I period.Women’s history institutions have no photo-graphs. As noted above, more examples arefound in small local history museums thanin major ones. The Hoover Company’s

Historical Center in Canton, Ohio has asmall number; and a private collector ownsmany more and shows a selection on hiswebsite http://vachunter.com.

Booth’s name appears in the BritishDictionary of National Biography and inbiographical reference works dealing withtechnology. The vacuum cleaners heinvented and manufactured are held inLondon’s Science Museum. Kenney’s namecannot be found in corresponding Americanreference books, the Library of Congress’“American Memory” or its Prints andPhotographs Collection, nor in theSmithsonian Institution. He was long forgot-ten by the 1980s, when the New JerseyInventors Hall of Fame was inauguratedwith names like Edison and Einstein.


SourcesCooley, Maxwell S., Vacuum Cleaning Systems. Heating and Ventilating Magazine, 1913

Federal Trade Commission. Report on the House Furnishings Industry. 1925

Foy, JessicaH. & Thomas J. Schlereth, American Home Life, 1880–1930: A Social History of Spaces andServices. Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1992

Giedion, S., Mechanization Takes Command. New York: Oxford University Press, 1948

Hardyment, Christina, From Mangle to Microwave. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1988

Semsch, Otto F., A History of the Singer Building Construction. New York: Shumway & Beattie, 1908

Strasser, Susan, Never Done: A History of American Housework. New York: Pantheon, 1982

Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 1934–35, vol. 15.

Assistance by the following institutions is gratefully acknowledged:

Hoover Historical Center, 1875 East Maple Street, North Canton, OH 44720–3331

Mt. St. Mary Academy, 1645 Route 22 West, Watchung, NJ 07069

Plainfield Public Library, Plainfield, NJ 07060–2517

Documents

By Mary Robinson Sive - Garden State Legacygardenstatelegacy.com/files/David_T_Kenney_Sive_GSL8.pdf · Johnston Avenue in North Plainfield’s Netherwood section as well as other