Eureka Vacuum Cleaner Company was founded in 1909 in Detroit, Mich. by Toronto, Canada-born real estate auctioneer Fred Wardell (1866–1952) to sell vacuum cleaners for which he had acquired several patents. At first only selling vacuum cleaners manufactured by others, in 1913 he and four partners purchased their first plant. In 1922, they introduced the Eureka Model 9, which undercut their main competitor
Hoover by 50% in price, with the same horsepower motor and a front-mounted bag that customers preferred to Hoover's rear-mounted bag, offered with a 10-day home trial, becoming the Model T of the vacuum cleaner industry, selling 1 million units in three years. The advertisement shows the price was $45 ($ in dollars). By 1927 Eureka sold 2 million units, selling one-third of all vacuums manufactured in the United States and settling into a perennial second-place position behind Hoover. In 1930, we saw an expansion into the making of other appliances with the introduction of the Eureka electric range. Partly due to the costs of a massive door-to-door sales force, along with the Great Depression, in the late 1930s the company went into the red, divesting its door-to-door force in 1940, and still operating in the red until it was saved only by World War II and a wartime production business. In 1945, looking to get into the booming postwar appliance industry, the company merged with
Williams Oil-O-Matic, a
Bloomington, Ill., manufacturer (founded 1918) of oil-based heaters and refrigerators for the home, and the name of the company was changed to Eureka-Williams Corporation. The company went on to expand its horizons, eventually manufacturing such diverse items as
heaters,
air conditioners, a
wooden lung, and school furniture, and acquiring the
National Stamping & Electric Works along with their White Cross brand. In 1953, it was purchased by
Henney Motor Company of
Freeport, Illinois, and in 1959 it became a division of
National Union Electric Corporation, going on to become the first U.S. manufacturer of a purpose-built electric car (1959–1961), the
Henney Kilowatt, which flopped commercially. In 1974, Eureka was purchased by
AB Electrolux of Sweden and the name was changed back to the Eureka Company. In 2004 the Eureka Company name was discontinued and replaced with Electrolux Home Products Division, although the brand name was still used. In 2016, Eureka was purchased by Chinese company
Midea Group, parent company of Midea America Corp. ==Filmography==