Street washing

A street sweeper or street cleaner may refer to a person's occupation, or a machine that cleans streets. A street sweeper cleans the streets, usually in an urban area.

Street sweepers have been employed in cities since sanitation and waste removal became a priority. A street-sweeping person would use a broom and shovel to clean off litter, animal waste and filth that accumulated on streets. Later, water hoses were used to wash the streets.

Machines were created in the 19th century to do the job more efficiently. Today, modern street sweepers are mounted on truck bodies and can vacuum debris that accumulates in streets.

By the 1840s, Manchester, England, had become known as the first industrial city. Manchester was home to the first passenger rail service in the world and had one of the largest textile industries of that time. As a result, the robust metropolis was said to be England’s unhealthiest place to live. In response to this unsanitary environment, Joseph Whitworth invented the mechanical street sweeper. The street sweeper was designed with the primary objective to remove trash from streets in order to maintain aesthetic goals and safety.

The very first street sweeping machine was patented in 1849 by its inventor, C.S. Bishop. For a long time, street sweepers were just rotating disks covered with wire bristles. These rotating disks served as mechanical brooms that swept the dirt on the streets.

A common misconception is that Charles Brooks invented the street sweeper in America in 1896. Brooks' design, far from being the "first street sweeper," was just a variation of what already existed, and the patent for it was among the more than 300 street sweeper patents issued in the United States before 1900. Most 19th-century sweepers, including the one in Brooks' patent, were horsecarts with no engine on board. The wheels on the cart turned gears or chains which drove the brush and belt. The first self-propelled sweeper vehicle patented in the USA, driven by steam engine and intended for cleaning railroad tracks was patented in 1868, patent #79606. Eureka C. Bowne was the first known woman to get a patent for a street sweeper in 1879, patent #222447. "Her success was great," wrote Matilda Joslyn Gage in The North American Review, Volume 136, Issue 318, May 1883.

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