The Dyson Story

James Dyson

You know the feeling when some everyday product lets you down. 'I could have designed this better myself', you think. But how many of us turn our thoughts into actions?

James Dyson does.

He is a man who likes to make things work better. With his research team he has developed products that have achieved sales of over $6 billion worldwide.

Ballbarrow
Market leader within 3 years

Trolleyball
The most practical boat launcher

A new idea

In 1978, James Dyson noticed how the air filter in the Ballbarrow spray-finishing room was constantly clogging with powder particles (just like a vacuum cleaner bag clogs with dust).

So he designed and built an industrial cyclone tower, which removed the powder particles by exerting centrifugal forces greater than 100,000 times those of gravity.

Could the same principle work in a vacuum cleaner? James Dyson set to work. 5 years and 5,127 prototypes later, the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner from Dyson arrived.


No Place For New Technology

Uninterested in new technology and wedded to vacuum bags (worth 250 million every year), major manufacturers turned James and his invention away.

James eventually licensed his design in Japan, the home of high-tech. The Japanese loved the pink G-Force and, in 1993, the royalties allowed James to manufacture a machine under his own name, DCO1.


Risk

An inventor pays substantial fees to renew patents every year. Though he brushed with bankruptcy during the development years, for James, it was money well spent.

In 1999, after a lengthy court battle, Hoover was found guilty of infringing James' patent. Other manufacturers, unable or unwilling to develop their own vacuum cleaners, still try to copy Dyson technology to no avail.


Improve

James and his engineers develop inventions, but also improve existing Dyson technology.

They're rather fastidious. Dyson machines now have smaller multiple cyclones, which create greater centrifugal forces, capturing more microscopic dust.

Dust you can't see.

All Change

Another problem to solve: normal upright vacuum cleaners have fixed wheels, running on a fixed axle.
They only move in straight lines. Like a pram.

A Dyson Ball machine is different. It rides on a ball, pivoting on a single point, allowing it to go in any direction.


Carbon Free

Conventional electric motors haven't changed much in 100 years. Bulky and fragile. The brushes wear down and emit carbon dust.

The Dyson digital motor works differently.

Controlled by microchip it spins at 98,000 rpm - five-times faster than a Formula 1 car engine. Because of its speed, the digital motor is half the size and half the weight of conventional motors. With no brushes or fixed magnets, it doesn't emit carbon either.