Electrolux XXX/LX Polisher Ephemera

[aeoliandave]

I like how the rivited Swedish logo plate exactly masks the (probably there) reverse relief American symbol/script on the casting.

 

[charles~richard]

Hi Dave,

Yes, the earlier XXX version does have the patent number and "PATENT PENDING" dye-stamped into the bottom of the housing and the later version has the Patent Number (2609556) AND the Design Patent number (D-158743). There is some crossover of that, e.g., I have a couple of the blue/turquoise specimens that still have "PATENT PENDING" on them.

 

[charles~richard]

Design Patent - Sheet 1

 

[charles~richard]

Design Patent - Sheet 2

 

[charles~richard]

Design Patent - Sheet 3

 

[aeoliandave]

The Patent Pending one has the nicer carton with the handles. After Milady or Milad tore the original brown paper tape the inner flaps fold up into handles and the outer flaps fold down to lock them in position for the closet shelf or hauling to the worksite. Neato.

 

[aeoliandave]

Patent pending...

 

[aeoliandave]

patent granted...

Well Charles, maybe we can't be in Omaha but we sure is having us some fun in-the-spirit right here...

 

[timborow]

Model/Year

What year/model did Electrolux stop making the polishers? Is there one for the Golden/Super J?
Tim

 

[ian88]

I'm not being funny Charles, mate but...

you don't need that many polishers =p

 

[aeoliandave]

Now hold on there, Ian. If yer not bein' funny then it follows yer bein' serious? This I doubt but question not the need, my friends...Ian doesn't 'need' to live in England either. LOL

And Tim, Electrolux replaced the Polisher with the Turbo Tool Power Unit to which a bewildering array of attachment tools could be fastened, sorta like the Kirby. Surely Charles can expand on this with dates & tool pictures.

Dave

mmm, its not always good to have an afternoon off on a rainy day...

 

[charles~richard]

The history and evolution of the polisher is covered on my Lux History web site - see link. Granted, given my obsession with them I need to do a whole special section just for them. *sigh* Just not enough hours in the day.

I have to say, it's SO EXCITING to see other people with these polishers. I believe we polisher nuts are definitely in the minority here!



http://www.137.com/lux

 

[petek]

Well of course we're in the minority since you own pretty much all of them in existence LOL

 

[charles~richard]

You know, it's a funny thing about these polishers. I looked for ONE polisher for years and years and years. I had yearned for one ever since my Mom got her new Tan G in 1968 and she would not let me use the left-over AE "waxer" with it (as she called it) because the stupid Electrolux salesman told her it would put a strain on the motor and burn it out. Well, since I could never use it with her new sweeper, I would just play with it "stand alone" and then one day I got curious about its innards so with great difficulty took it all apart. Then I could never get it back together. (Give me a break, I was only 12.) The last conscious memory I have of it is the top half of it sitting on the ground in the back yard. I don't honestly remember what happened to the rest of it.

That was one of the first things I actively started looking for when I started collecting vacuums in the mid 1970s. Then one day I found one at a flea market in Annapolis and I thought I was going to bust my gut, I got so excited. When I moved to California I had to leave it behind, along with a lot of other sweeper stuff most of which "somehow happened" to get thrown out, including that polisher.

So I continued looking and looking and looking out here in L.A. and then, once again, I finally found one in one of those big old funky "Purple Hearts Veterans" thrift shops. Then a couple of years later I found another. and another. Soon I had a half-dozen of them.

I think the most exciting one I found was back in 1994 when North Carolina collector Hans Craig was out here visiting me and we went thrifting one day. We went to a big old antique store down near my church where I had never been. Asked the guy about vacuums and he said he had "a bunch of 'em" upstairs. Boy, did he ever. About 15 of them. One of them was some sort of 50s canister that just sent Hans into a tizzy. I don't remember now what it was. There was one ratty old Electrolux LX but no other Lux stuff. I felt a bit disappointed because I had been getting the "sweeper psychic connection vibe" [see below] BIG TIME.

Then I happened to see a closet door up there (the antique store was in a big old house). I opened the door and peeked in. Would you know, sitting on the shelf was an Electrolux polisher, brand new in the box never used. The brushes and pads were still sealed in glassine wrappers, and all the literature and paperwork was there. Hans knew how crazy I was about polishers and he could tell I was about to collapse on the spot. He hissed, "Play it cool, dummy -- don't let the guy know how much you want it." Well, I guess I was successful because he only asked THREE DOLLARS for it.

Then eBay came along, and it seems nearly every week there were a half dozen or more polishers listed. I started buying every one I saw at first, because in the early days they never went for more than a couple of bucks. Then more collectors got on eBay and the prices started going up. So, since I already had "quite a few of them" (about twice as many as you see in the photo above, actually), I only started watching the really nice ones or the ones I found from overseas (a major revelation in and of itself!!!). I have not bought one in quite a while, and in a way it makes me a little bit sad when one gets listed and there are no bids on it.

-ooOoo-

Now I am going to go out on a limb and ask a very strange question ... have any of you heard of, or do you think you have "sweeper psychic connections?" Okay, I said it was weird.

What I mean is, back in the day when I did a lot of thrift shopping, all I had to do was walk in the store and stand there for a moment. If there was anything exciting in there vacuum-cleaner wise, I would get a mildly excited, sort-of tingly feeling in the pit of my stomach. The same feeling I would get when I was a little boy and I'd go exploring in one of the church-ladies' homes and find an Electrolux or Kirby --- or especially an Electrolux polisher. The stronger that feeling was, the more I just "knew" there was an amazing find in there. And when it was a polisher tucked away, I ==ALWAYS== knew it.

Sometimes it took some real digging and sleuthing and poking around, and when there were other people with me they'd think I lost my mind when I'd announce "There's an Electrolux polisher in here somewhere" and go looking. And look and LOOK until I found it. After a while, they'd say, oh come on, there obviously is not one here. Then I'd look under a rack of blankets or house coats or something and there it would be.

I could tell you story after story after story like this, of walking into a thrift shop, junk store, garage sale, old vac shop, and KNOWING whether or not it would be worthwhile to do a lot of scrounging around in there.

I do know that a couple of other "hard core" collectors have experienced this with their most beloved machines because we have talked about it over the years.

With me, it's always been about the polishers. Don't ask me why, but from as far back as I can remember, I have been ABSOLUTELY OBSESSED with them.

I think this may have something to do with a little game my mother would play with me -- borne partly out of fun and partly out of frustration over my intense fixation with her polisher. First, to keep it away from me she kept it on the shelf in the hall closet where she stored her Electrolux. Every time she would open the closet door I'd go running to see the "waxer." I remember sometimes after she used it, she would put it up on the shelf upside down while the brush was still spinning (it had a lot of torque and took a long time to stop spinning) and stay there fixed to that spot until it stopped turning. One day I dragged a stool from the kitchen down the hall and then a couple of cardboard boxes thinking I could stack them up and get up there. I had just started climbing up onto the stool when she happened to come into the hallway and found me. Of course I got a good scolding for that!

Then she tried storing it in the fold-out sofa bed in the living room. You would lift up the "seat" part of the sofa and pull it out, and the back would pivot down forming a twin-size bed. When it was in "couch" position there was a pretty good size space underneath the seat. She would lift up the seat and put the polisher in there, until one day she saw my tiny fingers desperately prying at that large, heavy sofa seat trying to get it open. She was afraid I would smash my fingers so she stopped putting it in there.

The next spot was in the attic. There was one of those pull-down attic doors in the ceiling of the utility room. You'd open the trap door by pulling down on a spring, then three sections of wooden stairs would fold down to the floor from inside the door. I clearly remember the "BYWRRRRONGGGGG" sound the large springs on the door would make when you'd open it. And whenever I'd hear it, I'd come running. Because I knew it would mean a glimpse of the polisher perched up there just inside the opening, or on a REALLY lucky day Daddy would be climbing up there to fetch it down for Mama to use. Then, after she came into the utility room several times and found me starting up at that trap door, she knew she had to find a new hiding place for it because she was afraid I would try to get up there.

One day she called out in a sing-songy voice (My God, I can't believe I remember all this ... I can't remember what happened yesterday!!!), "I bet YOU don't know where the WAXER is..." Well, that's all it took. I went looked, and I tore that house apart looking for it. And, you guessed it ... I found it. She had hidden it in the bottom of the towel hamper in the bathroom! I pried it up out of there and came running down the hall with it! Since I had found it, she was obliged to let me use it, and I did, until the droning, whining sound was finally too much for her and she made me stop. Off it went, to yet another hiding place.

My mom has sometimes kidded that she thinks my "association" with the waxer is because it reminds me of flying saucers ... another 'interest' I've had since childhood. But that's another story for another forum.......

Cue THEREMIN: {{{*oooooooEEEooooooo*}}

 

[charles~richard]

 

[charles~richard]

 

[charles~richard]

 

[charles~richard]

 

[charles~richard]

 

[charles~richard]

(The above five photos were one of my first Photoshop projects back when I began using a Mac and was training for a graphic artist position with a printing company in Santa Monica. I printed these out and sent them to my mom. They really freaked her out....... But again, "that's another story............."

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"There is a level of reality where
there is no time and there is no space,
there's just energy, and we have contact
with that through the intermediate layers ...
So, if the right connections are established,
I don't see why a piece of matter ...
can't make contact through this very high
level of reality that has access to
everything, past and future."
--Robert A. Moog
Electronic Music Pioneer
1934-2005
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