Dirt Devil

Dirt Devil is a brand name of household vacuum cleaners and floor care. There are two main units: Power for large houses, and RV unit for smaller houses or apartments, as well as a variety of other floor care products including handheld vacuum cleaners and carpet shampooing machines.

Company history

The company was founded 1905 in Cleveland, Ohio by Philip Geier. In 1955 they built the first household vacuum with a patented Cyclone system. Since then over 25 million have been sold. Originally the company was called "Royal Manufacturing" and made vacuum cleaners with metal cases. In the 1980s they began selling the mass-market "Dirt Devil" line with plastic cases; originally the packaging said "Royal Dirt Devil" but over the years the name "Royal" appeared in smaller and smaller type until it vanished entirely from the package. Today the brand is "Dirt Devil", but they also continue to manufacture the "Royal" line, though it is much more expensive and of a higher quality than Dirt Devil, and the corporate legal name is the rather anonymous "TTI Floor Care North America". TTI stands for Techtronic Industries, a Hong Kong-based firm and the makers of Hoover, Vax, and other vacuum cleaners.

Dirt

Dirt is unclean matter, especially when in contact with a person's clothes, skin or possessions when they are said to become dirty. Common types of dirt include:

Exhibitions and studies

A season of artworks and exhibits on the theme of dirt was sponsored by the Wellcome Trust in 2011. The centrepiece was an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection showing pictures and histories of notable dirt such as the great dust heaps at Euston and King's Cross in the 19th century and the Fresh Kills landfill which was once the world's largest.

Foci

Computer keyboards are especially dirty as, on average, they contain 70 times more microbes than a lavatory seat.

Cleaning

When things are dirty they are usually cleaned with solutions like hard surface cleaner and other chemicals; much domestic activity is for this purpose — washing, sweeping and so forth.

Devil

The devil (from Greek: διάβολος or diábolos = slanderer or accuser) is believed in many religions, myths and cultures to be a supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the archenemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly, ranging from being an effective opposite force to the creator god, locked in an eons long struggle for human souls on what may seem even terms (to the point of dualistic ditheism/bitheism), to being a comical figure of fun or an abstract aspect of the individual human condition.

While mainstream Judaism contains no overt concept of a devil, Christianity and Islam have variously regarded the devil as a rebellious fallen angel or jinn that tempts humans to sin, if not committing evil deeds himself. In these religions – particularly during periods of division or external threat – the devil has assumed more of a dualistic status commonly associated with heretics, infidels, and other unbelievers. As such, the devil is seen as an allegory that represents a crisis of faith, individualism, free will, wisdom and enlightenment.

The Dirt

The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band (ISBN 0-06-098915-7) is a collaborative autobiography written by Mötley Crüe, Neil Strauss, and the "Mötley" managers, where they write about the members of Mötley Crüe. First published in 2001, it chronicles the formation of the band, their rise to fame and their decadent lifestyles. They write of the highs and lows of their lives with rare candor.

The Dirt was written by Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, Vince Neil and Nikki Sixx, with the aid of New York Times writer Neil Strauss, and contains chapters written by brief bandmember John Corabi and former band manager Doc McGhee. Music executives such as co-manager Doug Thaler, Tom Zutaut, and Mike Amata also make short contributions in which they present their versions of events.

The book contains over 100 photographs, mostly black and white, with a 16-page color section in the middle of the book.

The first hardback edition was on the New York Times Bestseller list for four weeks and sold 13,000 copies in the UK.