Vacuum cleaner
The vacuum cleaner evolved from the carpet sweeper via manual vacuum cleaners. The first manual models, using bellows, were developed in the 1860s, and the first motorized designs appeared at the turn of the 20th century, with the first decade being the boom decade.
Crookes tube
By the 1870s, Crookes (among other researchers) was able to evacuate his tubes to a lower pressure, 10 to 5x10 atm, using an improved Sprengel mercury vacuum pump invented by his coworker Charles A. Gimingham. He found that as he pumped more air out of his tubes, a dark area in the glowing gas formed next to the cathode. As the pressure got lower, the dark area, now called the "Crookes dark space", spread down the tube, until the inside of the tube was totally dark. However, the glass envelope of the tube began to glow at the anode end.