John S. Thurman invented a gasoline-powered "pneumatic carpet renovator" in 1898 and patented it a year later. Today, Missouri is home to a Vacuum Cleaner Museum.

A Chicago inventor named Ives McGaffey had patented a "sweeping machine" in 1869, but it wasn't motorized. A British engineer named Hubert Cecil Booth also patented a motorized vacuum in 1901.