Sir James Dyson was born in Norfolk on the 2nd May 1947 into a middle-class family who weren’t particularly wealthy. From an early age Dyson was interested in art and design. As a result, after leaving school he attended an art school in London, before going on to study furniture design and later interior design at the Royal College of Art. Whilst at the Royal College of Art in 1970, Dyson launched his first product, The Sea Truck. The next product he invented was the Ballbarrow, essentially a modified wheelbarrow that used a ball to replace the wheel. His brother had been the one who had first considered the idea of a ball to replace wheel functions in other products and James stuck with this idea with his next invention, the Trolleyball, a trolley that was able to launch boats. He then went onto design the Wheelboat, which was able to travel on both land and water at speeds of up to 64 km/h.

It was whilst he was vacuuming his home in 1978 that James Dyson made the observation that dust was constantly blocking the airflow of his bagged vacuum cleaner, leading to a rapid reduction in suction power. He began to work on a solution to this problem. 5,127 prototypes and 5 years later in 1983, supported by his wife’s salary as an art teacher, he had created the G-Force Dual Cyclone, the world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner.

Dyson began to offer his new invention to major manufacturers, but none of them were willing to launch his product in the United Kingdom as they were all determined to continue selling bag vacuum cleaners, a market at the time worth over $500 million per year. However, Dyson was undeterred by what he considered to be a minor setback and launched his new vacuum cleaner in Japan instead through catalogue based sales. The selling price of the G-Force was roughly £2000 and it was made in bright pink. In 1991 Dyson’s invention won the International Fair prize in Japan.

Having failed to sell his invention to major manufacturers in the UK and Europe, he decided to start-up his own manufacturing company using income from the license for the G-Force in Japan and to create a new model himself in the UK. In June 1993, he opened a factory and research centre near his home in Malmesbury, Wiltshire and began to make his machine. The result was the Dyson Cyclone, which even collected the finest particles of dust and was the first vacuum cleaner ever produced that offered constant suction.

Within 2 years, Dyson was the biggest-selling vacuum cleaner in the UK. Other companies in the market tried to prevent Dyson showing how their vacuum cleaners would clog and lose suction whilst his wouldn’t. By this time, three in five people were buying a Dyson vacuum cleaner because it had been recommended to them. The Dyson cyclone became the fastest ever selling vacuum cleaner in the UK.

The initial team of three engineers working for Dyson grew to 350 scientists in a brand new research centre. Their role was to investigate ways in which to make Dyson products work ever more effectively. They were persistent in trying to create vacuums that had higher levels of suction and set about developing a completely new type of cyclone system. They made the discovery that if greater airflow was created through many cyclones, further suction power was generated. This led to the creation of the Root8CycloneT, which was when the US was first introduced to Dyson. In 2005, it was announced that Dyson cleaners had become the US market leader.

However, Dyson’s vacuum was very nearly never manufactured thanks to the cost of legal fees and patents that he incurred whilst trying to defend his invention against patent infringement suit by a giant corporation. This almost bankrupted him during the development years when he had no real income. Dyson risked everything he had and fortunately for him the risk he took paid off. In 1999, Hoover UK tried to imitate a Dyson vacuum and James was forced to protect his invention in the courts. After a case that lasted eighteen months, Dyson finally won a victory against Hoover UK, and the latter were forced to pay Dyson millions in damages for patent infringement.

In 2000, Dyson expanded his range of appliances to include a washing machine. The new technology was called the ContraRotatorT, the world’s first washing machine that contained 2 drums. The two rotating drums moved in opposite directions within the appliance and the machine was made available in Dyson’s signature bright range of colours. However, unlike his vacuum cleaner, the idea was never really embraced by the buying public and is no longer available.

Thanks to the savings in production costs Dyson achieved by moving production to Malaysia, he was able to invest in further research and development at Malmesbury. In 2005 Dyson added the concept of a wheel ball from one of his earlier inventions, the Ballbarrow, to a vacuum cleaner, thus creating the Dyson Ball which he claims makes the appliance more manoeuvrable.

In 2008, the Sunday Times Rich List estimated James Dyson’s fortune to be £1.1 billion.

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