A VACUUM STREET-CLEANER.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 113, 14 May 1910, Page 10

A VACUUM STREET-CLEANER.

+. The war against dust which is now so successfully waged in houses by means of vacuum-cleaning machines bids fair to be extended to include street-cleaning. "It is just as important," says the Scientific American, "to keep the dust «down «hen sweeping streets, and more 60, because street dust is always heavily laden with disease germs which are a constant menace to passers-by and particularly to the etreet-sweepers. A machine has just been perfected which works somewhat on the principle of the smaller household vacuum-cleaners. The dirt and refuse of the surface over which the machine | travels is gathered by rotating brushes and then by pneumatic power is 6uckcd or lifted into conduits, where the heavier parts of the refuse are extracted and deposited in closed receptacles. The fine dust, which it has been impossible for mechanical sweepers as heretofore devised to dispose of, is carried onward in closed conduits and wotted down so that it may be taken off in the form of eilt. The suction mechanism is operated by tho engine, which propels the machine, tho power of the exhaust being utilised in tho process of teparating and reducing the dust. By actual tests recently made under tho most adverse conditions this sweeper has. shown its ability to clean in an hour as much street surface as the old-fashioned horse-drawn 6\\eoper will sweep or brush in sis hours.

"Did you get in without your wife hearing you Ust night?" "No, and I didn't gftfc in without hearing her, either."