The Design and Creation of the GE Roll-Easy Vacuum!

[unimatic1140]

Under most circumstances I will try not to highlight the same brand two weeks in a row with my blog posts, but we just uncovered this wonderful article and wanted to share it right away.

The prototype pictures are simply amazing!

Please feel free to post this article on Facebook, etc. or share this article with others who might enjoy it.

Design and Creation of the General Electric Roll-Easy Vacuum Cleaner

[this post was last edited: 9/17/2014-08:11]

 

[hydralique]

Wow!

Great article, these are fascinating vacs . . . the photo above always makes me think of the Del Rubio Triplets, lol.

 

[suckolux]

Great find!

 

[electrolux137]

~
~

These "Product Stats" are wonderful but I am a bit puzzled -- are they archives of actual articles from magazines or trade publications, or web pages that someone assembled from other materials?

 

[electrolux137]

~
~

P.S.: I'd love to add this to my "Roll Easy web site but don't know who to ask about it. There's no author or ownership information on the page.

http://www.1377731.com/rolleasy

 

[unimatic1140]

Hi Charles, I am the creator/assembler of all of this fabulous history. The answer to your question is D. all of the above . Please message me privately for more information on that, as I don't want to hijack this thread.

The Roll-Easy pages on your website are done just beautifully, btw!

Glad everyone is enjoying these.[this post was last edited: 9/17/2014-14:40]

 

[aeoliandave]

Sitting Easy on a Roll...

This is very exciting and stimulatin', Robert. As you might know I am a HUGE fan of the Roll-Easy (and other unique vacuum designs). I have posted at length about my 3 Roll-Easys; it's all in the archives.

This article, that reads like it was transcribed from an internal employee magazine, informs and answers questions I had, why & how the refined 2nd generation Roll-Easy came to be and also illuminates the development process manufacturer's used to go through. 6 years planning from inception to realization and tantalizing continuing improvements that never came to be. (so that's what the odd back bracket on the Swivel-Top caster base is for! I did not know that.)

Sadly the designer/home fashion consultant Miss Freda Diamond is not mentioned by name but perhaps that only illustrates her worthy but limited input. At least we can credit her for the championing for two-tone Turquoise & copper scheme. One wonders what other colour combos the engineers had cooked up...We have heard rumours of a Pink Roll-Easy and it stands to reason that is was a prototype that escaped the crusher. I can imagine it in yellow and green which are several of the colours that Cycolac vinyl plastic came in for GE.

Thank you Charles for posting your link to your extraordinary Roll-Easy pages for we faithful oldsters and new ones who have not yet finished mining the huge archives on Vacuumland.

 

[luxman107]

I absolutely love those machines. The roll away can be seen a few times in the early Donna Reed shows

 

[suckolux]

Nice Dave!

 

[kenkart]

I LOVE them...

I have one of the early ones and can NOT find any attachments for it, I need the flip over rug/floor tool and the upholstery tool, and of course the gold wands and hose end are totally unfindable, but what a wonderful design.

 

[super-sweeper]

This is beautiful! GE really gave a care in 1955! I'll eat a dusting brush if GE still calls in home designers and prototypes for their appliances!<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"> </span>

 

[kenkart]

They cared....

And so did all the manufacturers in those days, Most of the men had fought some terrible battles for this country in war and were really proud of their products!Unlike todays..The cheapest junk we can sell is best...Then it was, The BEST we can do is never good enough!,,I know this about the Roll Easy, whoever designed it must have had stock in a screw factory, because it has about a zillion of them!!LOL..The motor is the same used in the early GE canisters, a very good double ball bearing 2 fan unit.

 

[dysonman1]

My only complaint about the Roll Easy, and it's only because the machine was so 'thoroughly tested', is that all the hoses broke. Surely, during the years of testing, some engineer would have looked at the angle at which the hose touches the floor and realized that it was detrimental to the life of the hose. In use, the machine coupling (which threads into the hose), is always touching the floor at the point of connection between the hose and machine coupling, and the hose is bent at a considerable angle upwards. The constant rubbing on the floor, along with the force used to pull the cleaner, resulted in all the hoses breaking at the machine coupling. The very first vacuum cleaner I ever brought home was a trash find GE Roll Easy, in 1968. The cleaner was about 12 years old. I knew the family that threw it away. The hose was shot, having been shortened so often (because it would go bad at the machine coupling end), it was about 2 feet long. I still have that cleaner today, in the Museum, but with a replacement turquoise vinyl hose on it that Alex Braun found for me.

 

[suckolux]

Just a question to anyone? It looks heavy and would strain the hose pulling it too? Lower back issues here, always on my mind how much it weighs, not that it stops me from using the Old Lux!

 

[super-sweeper]

Every vacuum has it's drawbacks, Tom! At least if the hose exploded in use, you'd be left with one awesome turquoise end-table! 

 

[aeoliandave]

"one awesome turquoise end-table!"

Good one, Alex. Lay a glass disk on it and you have a Lazy Susan end table!

Having printed and absorbed the article in detail I am struck by a few things...

"We planned a heavy schedule of television advertising, because you can grasp the advantages of the new cleaner best when you actually see them demonstrated. The advent of widespread television viewing had occurred at just the right time for our vacuum-cleaner business. Now we could use television to bring actual cleaner demonstrations into millions of American homes."

Then these commercials should still exist in the digital aether, YouTube etc. The Roll-Easy did appear in Dennis The Menace, I Dream Of Jeanie and The Donna Reed tv shows. The search begins...

Tom, your analysis of the hose problem is spot on. The cleaner always comes to rest on the hose coupler. Explains why every original hose I have inspected seems too short. More often a found Roll-Easy has a substitute cloth braided GE hose from a Swiveltop.
Or, as you say a plastic hose screwed in to the ends. It was a day of extreme happiness when I spotted a 14 VDC Dog Clipper at a junk store...in vivid Turquoise. This gives me a 11 foot length on my first generation R1.

The author of this 1957 report has a delightful sense of humour, too:

"In the stairway test, crudest of all, a husky man walked up and down a flight of stairs 100 times, pulling or pushing the cleaner. This test provided important conclusions: It taught us much about human endurance values — it also indicated that the cleaner was too heavy! Because this test proved too much for our test man, we replaced him with a suitable testing machine."

This image of the husky man is indelibly imprinted in my imagination. No doubt a burly hairy bear shedding even his wife-beater during his perspiring 100 flight exertions.

Never mind - it's my fantasy and I'll grin if I want to...Maybe even reproduce it one day.

 

[kenkart]

Westinghouse

Solved the problem on their big wheel cleaner, and GE could have by placing some sort of wheel or roller above and below the handle/hose inlet, so when you were using it the hose wouldnt hit the floor..

 

[rugsucker]

Roll Easy

Great & amazing article on GE & many others.Keep em coming!!
Roll Easy got an early pic in Life magazine when shown at the Housewares show moving up & down stair steps.(Liz Taylor may be on cover.)
"end table"?--Why stop at a table?There was a legendary vac store in the mid west that used Roll Easys to stack up a shelf unit as others would use concrete blocks!!
As above the hose was good news - bad news.These were from Dayco rubber in Ohio and had a series of 1/4 page or smaller ads with the message that 'Your great Roll Easy(or Kirby or Westinghouse or ??)vacuum has the new colored rubber hose--'.These were flexible,light & matching colors but in real life would crack from pulling vac or being stored in a bend.And not just on Roll Easy.GE went back to a woven hose about 1960.And the good news - bad news continued in that the hose rarely broke but could steadily wear & lose suction.The wear on the Roll Easy hose was not so much from resting on floor but the pulling in all directions that any vac has.The Westinghouse Mobile did keep the hose in one position but takes more effort to move.The Roll Easy allows you to 'swing'it from side to side.
As I mentioned here in the past I found a text book of advertising that shows a sketch and picture of a set design for TV ad.I think the living room might have had 1 step and then the housewife is moving toward the hall and stairway.

 

[williamr1248]

The Design and Creation of the GE roll-easy cleaner

This might be a question for Dave, Hans or Charlie, but I do remember my cousin's mother got one and I remember it being much heavier than I expected it to be ( of course I was only 4-5 years old). I also remember the copper wands seeming kind of loose at the connections when in use. I spotted those cooper wands and unique color as it sat behind a swinging door from the dining room to the kitchen. I remember it being pretty quiet when she used it on her carpets and hardwood floors. Even at that young age, GE seemed like a second class vacuum like a Sears sweeper. I thought you had to have an Air-Way or Electrolux if you had a GOOD sweeper.
It sure was a looker.
Another thing that seems strange is that they are showing it in the ad with early American furniture! You would think they would have show cased it with modern 1950's furniture.