James Dyson Keeps Innovating

The story was originally broadcast on May 20, 2007.

Twenty-nine years ago, James Dyson designed a new way to clean the carpet.

"When I started off, I was working in a shed behind my house," he told CBS News correspondent Richard Roth. "All I had was a drill, an electric drill. That was the only machine I had."

Now he has a fortune of more than $2 billion, a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth and a place in design museums — all from his invention of an odd-looking vacuum that doesn't need a bag and doesn't lose suction. He's sold more than 20 million of them, but he's still tinkering with the design.

"The thing about being an engineer or designer is that you've always got something better once you've completed one thing," he said. "It's sort of this restlessness to improve and make things better."

Art and architecture were part of his training but Dyson says his greatest source of inspiration has always been irritation. Years ago, he hated the wheelbarrow he was using while remodeling his home.

"I set about to redesign it," he said. "And then went into production with a wheelbarrow with a big ball on the front instead of a wheel — the "ball barrow" — so it doesn't sink into soft ground."

And when he got angry with a vacuum cleaner, his life changed.

"Things about a vacuum cleaner irritated me beyond belief, the fact they lost suction," he said.

The idea for a solution came at a lumber yard, where Dyson was buying wood. Blown by a powerful fan, the spinning sawdust was forced by centrifugal force down against the curved wall of the giant cyclone vent. The sawdust collected at the bottom while the clean air went out the top.

"So I rushed home and took the bag off my upright, one of those ones with a bag on the back, and made a cardboard miniature version of what I'd seen on the sawmill, connected it with some pipe," Dyson said. "And, you know, two hours later, I was pushing around in my home the world's first vacuum cleaner that didn't lose suction."

Why? Because it didn't use a filter bag to collect the dust. It took more than 5,000 tries to develop a cyclonic vacuum cleaner he could sell, and then for years, no one but the Japanese would buy it.

Frustration wasn't just the mother of his invention; it's what started his business.

"Partly the anger, partly a rising debt to the bank, 'cause I borrowed money to develop it," he said. "Fear is always a good motivator."

And self-confidence, it turned out, made a good salesman. Dyson's vacuums are now built in Malaysia. His factory in England has become a center for research and design, and an incubator for engineering talent.

New ideas from here include a miniature version of the cyclonic vacuum cleaner, and a high-tech hygiene invention that has nothing to do with cleaning floors.

The Dyson Airblade uses a 400-mile-an-hour stream of air like a windshield wiper for drying hands in the bathroom.

"You put them in here," Dyson said demonstrating his invention. "And then you pull them out slowly. And they're dry."

Dyson worries that engineering's image as dry or boring is costing the West a competitive edge in the development — or improvement — of industrial and consumer products. So he's been fostering innovation with a global design competition for students, and with a $25 million investment in a new English high school of design innovation, he hopes to draw more young people into engineering.

"We want engineering to be seen as the exciting, creative thing that it is," he said. "Designing aircraft and racing cars is an extremely exciting thing."

He tells employees to expect failure, but not to accept it. And he doesn't like giving up. He still believes his Dyson washing machine with two counter-rotating drums and a $2,000 price tag was better than anything on the market, but it's no longer for sale.

"It's too expensive to make at the moment," Dyson said. "And that's the problem we're trying to solve."

It may be just a matter of time and design.