In article ,
"Bob Eager" writes:
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 23:08:25 UTC, "Alan Vann"
wrote:

Andrew Gabriel wrote:
I have an old Hoover Constellation I use for this, and two hoses.

A couple of people have mentiond Constellations[1] recently which reminded
me: Did anyone see the news article a couple of weeks back? - The one about
the guy who'd just spent 8 years inventing a vacuum cleaner that hovers on a
cushion of air......

Do you have a reference?

BTW, there's a Constellation in the Science Museum...

I went to an exhibition in the V&A some years back, and they
had a living room setup for each decade through the century
(this was last century;-). The 1960's room had a constellation
in it. I remember thinking what poor shape it was in -- mine
which was still in use as the main vacuum cleaner then was in
much better condition.

They come up on ebay sometimes. Hoover also produced some
gimmicks after the same style -- there's a Hoover constellation
expanding tape measure which is functional and looks like a
minature version of the vacuum cleaner. (Never had one, but
seen them a couple of times.)

Oh and yes, I learnt about hovercraft as a child pushing the
thing up and down my parents' hallway. I also have a young
childhood memory of sitting counting the number of consertina
sections in the hose, and each time I got to the end of a
decade, having to ask "what comes after 49?", "what comes
after 59?", etc. (I recall the total was 115 -- I could check
if I was right, except the hose got shortened a few times over
the years when it wore through at the ends.) So this machine
clearly played quite an educational role in my early life.

I expect today's 3 and 4 year olds all know the principles
of cyclone filtration instead ;-0

--
Andrew Gabriel