At the very end of the 19th century a guy from St. Louis named Thurman invented a primitive, gasoline-powered device intended for cleaning which blew air into a receptacle.
After apparently seeing a demonstration of Thurman’s device given my Thurman himself in London another guy, Hubert Cecil Booth, came up with the concept of a vacuum cleaner.
As Booth recalled decades later, that year he attended “a demonstration of an American machine by its inventor” at the Empire Music Hall in London. The inventor is not named, but Booth’s description of the machine conforms fairly closely to Thurman’s design, as modified in later patents. Booth watched a demonstration of the device, which blew dust off the chairs, and thought that “…if the system could be reversed, and a filter inserted between the suction apparatus and the outside air, whereby the dust would be retained in a receptacle, the real solution of the hygienic removal of dust would be obtained.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_cleaner
“THE STORY OF THE VACUUM CLEANER.”
And how did he actually test the idea, prior to inventing the first vacuum?
He tested the idea by laying a handkerchief on the seat of a restaurant chair, putting his mouth to the handkerchief, and then trying to suck up as much dust as he could onto the handkerchief. Upon seeing the dust and dirt collected on the underside of the handkerchief, he realized the idea could work.
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