It’s Sir James Dyson – the inventor of the Dyson bag-less vacuum cleaner and other cool consumer products such as the airblade, room fans, hairdryers and the like. Dyson has an estimated worth of just under $20 Billion. In case you are wondering, Richard Branson isn’t in the top 10.
Sir James started experimenting with vacuums in 1978 because he was frustrated with his family’s vacuum and decided to invent a better one. He spent five years testing his designs and went through 5,127 prototypes. He had A LOT OF FAILURES! The Dyson bag-less vacuum first went on sale in 1993. Surprisingly, Dyson attended art school and does not have an engineering degree.
In case you were wondering, Sir James Dyson did not come up with the concept of the Dyson Sphere – that was Freeman Dyson.
Another interesting post about Brits: Who is The Second Greatest Briton? (Number one is Winston Churchill.)
We forget how much of our modern world is a creation of engineers and architects who built the impossible, with none of the computerized or sophsticated construction techniques of today. They had to solve problems the old fashioned way, with brain power. Think of the Eads Bridge and the miracle it was regarded to be in its time. There are probably hundreds of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s and James Eads’ out there, and it is good that the UK remembers its heritage even if Americans tend to move past theirs.
His episode on the podcast “how I built this” is one of my favorites. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?i=1000402035861