Welcome to the era of intelligent floorcare

Sep 01 2021 Floor Cleaning Equipment Autonomous 2 Min. Read

We’ve come a long way, baby! From scrubbing floors on our hands and knees with old wooden buckets and blocky, wood brushes, to hand cranked vacuums to dust blowing, noisy nightmares that weighed a ton—look at us now!

Did you know there is a Museum of Clean in Idaho that celebrates the history of vacuums and other floor cleaning equipment? It’s true! https://museumofclean.com/exhibit/vacuum-collection/

Founder, Don Aslett, has been a featured exhibitor at ISSA Shows around the country https://www.cleanlink.com/hs/article/ISSAINTERCLEAN-Heads-To-Chicago--14678 for many years with his goal of expanding the presence, awareness, and value of clean.

The First Vacuum Cleaner

According to the US patent office, the first vacuum cleaner, the “Whirlwind,” was invented in Chicago in 1868 by Ives W. McGaffey. The Whirlwind was difficult to use because the operator had to manually turn a crank while pushing it across the floor—can you imagine?

https://suiter.com/patent-of-the-day-improved-sweeping-machine/

Vacuum cleaner patent document and Clarke floor cleaner brochure

The First Automatic Floor Scubber

In 1952, Clarke Technology invented the first automatic floor scrubber, right here in Muskegon, MI! The auto scrubbers and sweepers we know today sprang from these early inventions and the innovations keep coming, with the latest developments in automation taking industrial floor cleaning to whole new level.

According to Karcher NA, “The start of floor-cleaning by machines dates back more than 100 years. The first floor polisher was developed at the start of the 20th Century to take the monotony out of tedious work. The 1930s then saw the variant for wet floor cleaning, and the first scrubber machine, with integrated suction function, appeared on the market in the 1950s. Another milestone occurred in 1986 with the first walk-behind machine with roller brushes, which scrubs, vacuums and sweeps in one step, and significantly improves cleaning performance on structured floors.”

https://www.kaercher.com/us/inside-karcher/newsroom/know-how-for-professionals/history-of-the-floor-scrubber.html

Now, we have walk behinds and ride-on sweepers, scrubbers and sweeper-scrubber combo units that are capable of cleaning over 100,000 sq. ft. on a single tank and covering 74,000 sq ft per hour. And, even more exciting, autonomous machines, like the Nilfisk Liberty SC50, that cleans autonomously (without an operator) for up to six hours on a single charge. The Liberty also automatically maps out the most efficient cleaning paths and retraces them every time. So you can clean more space in less time at a lower cost every single day.