Vacuum cleaners may seem complicated but are really quite simple. What happens when you stick a straw in your favorite beverage and you use it to drink with? That's right, suction. Believe it or not the over complicated idea of a vacuum is really along the same principle as sucking on a straw.

What happens is you are causing a pressure drop at both ends of the straw and since the liquid pressure is greater at the bottom your beverage is actually pulled up to the top. That is the general idea.

While this is a simple process a vacuum cleaner is only slightly more complicated. It requires a space for the air to come in and of course to go out. In the simple sense all you really need is a canister, a motor and a fan. Of course there are filters and bags to clean the air and catch all the debris but they aren't required to make this principle work.

Take a look at a simple desk fan; the propeller blades are angles to scoop air in greater force as the motor turns. As these blades push air out the front of the fan these same blades are causing suction at the rear of the fan. Pretty simple, eh?

In order to create an actual vacuum cleaner all you really need is a canister to place this fan into. When you operate your vacuum there is an exhaust which is the same as the front of the desk fan we were talking about. Are you starting to get the idea?

While there are many different designs in vacuum cleaners they all accomplish their purpose in the same way. This was a very simple explanation but I do hope it takes the big mystery of how vacuum cleaners have operated for the last 100 years.

The first vacuum was not electrical and did not have a fan system but rather a push rod. You pushed this rod in and out like a bicycle pump, imagine that!

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