General Electric 1960's Upright - Singer Clone

[eurekaprince]

Below you'll see a link to an eBay listing for a print advertisement from General Electric. It shows a beautiful, sleek, bagged, fan-first GE upright that looks like it's a clone of the revolutionary Singer Side-ways Motor upright from the 1950's (Designed by Raymond Loewy?).....

I have never seen a photograph of one of these in real life. Does anyone here at Vacuumland own such a unique vac?



http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-196...739?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5ae5e935b3

 

[tazcatsdad]

Very interesting!

<span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva;">And I have to admit, I've never thought of that particular GE as a Singer clone.  I've only ever seen one of them "up close and personal", so to speak -- it was in a Salvation Army store many years before I had 1) sufficient disposable income to buy vacuums and 2) the transportational means to bring it home (IIRC I was in my early teens when I saw it ... late '70s/early '80s, maybe?) -- and since then all I've ever seen have been adverts like the one you mentioned.  But I never once equated it with a Singer!  It is possible that they could have been designed by the same designer, though ... or is it?</span>


 


<span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva;">Bill W.</span>

 

[eurekaprince]

Bill - I have no idea about the inner workings of this GE upright.

It just seems to me that the description in the advertisement describes a very sleek head that could only be the result of the ingenious "re-orientation" of the motor that was first seen on that Singer upright. In all previous uprights the motor was either "face down" with the fan facing the ground, or "face-forward" with the fan facing the front of the machine like so many Kirbys and Royals and even all the GE uprights made before 1960.

With Singer's revolutionary design, the motor has the fan (or 2 fans) face sideways, and the motor itself can be pushed back far from the front edge of the powerhead. It looks to me that this innovative sleek GE was doing the same thing - resulting in a very low-profile head that "floats" to adjust to any carpet height. It's a revolution in design that is now visible in any bag-first "clean-air" upright - a sideways motor with the fan facing one side, and the belt pulley facing the other side.

I am SOOOOO curious to see this thing in real-life!

 

[chan55]

GE Upright

I have always thought it was an interesting vac, and I too have never met one. I wonder how long they were around? I also find it so odd that GE stopped making uprights for so long and then came back. Does anyone have a picture of the last GE Upright from the 50's?

 

[kenkart]

I can tell you this!

That machine is where Dyson got the idea for the ball,,This GE has a big wide rubber covered roller thing in the rear of the housing that it rolls on, very similar to Dysons ball.

 

[vacbear58]

I can tell you this!

Hans

I have no doubt that the Dyson engineering team look to past developments so maybe or maybe not. However one of his earlier designs was the ball barrow - a wheel barrow with a ball rather than a wheel, which made similar claims about it manoevabality

Al