Alan Brazier

To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page, or replace this tag with a more specific message. Editing help is available.
This article has been tagged since January 2006.

Alan Brazier invented a brand of wet-dry vacuum cleaners called VAX in the 1970s.

That brand's advertising slogan, "Nothing sucks like a Vax", was often applied wryly by users of VAX computers.

 This business-related biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Alan Brazier did not invent the Vax 3-1 vacuum cleaner neither did he realise the need for this type of machine until he saw an article in Design magazine from an inventor named Bricci- based in Wales. This gentleman had invented a carpet washing machine powered by an ordinary vacuum cleaner. Brazier approached Bricci to sell his product for him. Brazier then approached me to redesign this machine as I had already designed a previous carpet cleaning machine for him which his partner Brian Ramsden had named the Invader. It was Ramsden that named the Vax.

At this time, due to circumstances involving my fathers company, I was just completing my design for a wet and dry machine with integral by-pass motor small enought for every day use in shops offices and pubs, anywhere in fact that continual traffic soiled carpets. It was only when I was doing some plumbing at my cottage that I realised that this unit also sucked up spills- to my relief at that point of time.

This machine I offered under an agreement to Brazier and his partner.

It was the unique cleaning head that was the secret of the design.

The cleaning head which Alan Brazier patented without my knowledge, using a patent agent named Dr. Harrison of Forester Kettley in Birmingham, to the extent where Harrison even used my original drawing for the prototype head in the patent application. Having gained an illegal patent Brazier was then able to use the same to sell my design- again without my knowledge, to a company who agreed to pay the costs for this machine to be produced in plastics and sold as a commercial venture. All this was done behind my back, although I continued to develop the machine. Even having a written agreement with Brazier which he neither heeded nor paid monies on. The sad story continues-

Mick Atkinson, Inventor and designer of the 'VAX'3-1 vacuum cleaner.

Retrieved from "http://www.dictionpedia.com/en/Alan_Brazier"