 An electrical appliance manufacturer has launched what it claims is the biggest change to vacuum cleaners since it introduced bagless technology 12 years ago. The Dyson company has invented a machine with a single ball-shaped wheel designed to make the appliance far easier to manoeuvre. Owners can change direction with a small turn of the wrist rather than having to use the push-pull method. Its inventor, James Dyson, turned the world of vacuum cleaners on its head in 1993 with the arrival of the DCO1, the first in a range of bagless machines giving constant suction. Dyson's cleaner designs are now the biggest-sellers in the UK, Europe, the US and Australia. The new Ball, or DC15, has 182 patents and is the result of three years' worth of work by around 350 scientists and engineers at Dyson's research and development centre in Wiltshire. Balls have always fascinated James Dyson - he invented the Ballbarrow after experiencing the frustrations of a conventional wheelbarrow at first hand with its unstable nature and inclination to sink in soft ground (this was, incidentally, while he was busy designing a Tube Boat). So, how did a maverick English inventor manage to design, market and manufacture his own obsession which took 15 years and 5,127 prototypes to perfect, then make money whilst toppling market leaders in the process? Faced with little or no support at every turn, Dyson's story is one of unwavering optimism and unswerving self-belief that eventually brought him spectacular success. It is also one of skulduggery by various partners and financial institutions and from the competitors he was striving to toss aside like a clogged hoover bag. It took just 18 words - some time in 1979, James Dyson first heard: "But, James, if there were a better kind of vacuum cleaner, Hoover or Electrolux would have invented it." That was his wake-up call. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, the vacuum cleaner discovered what life was really about only after the cyclone arrived. The concept had remained essentially unchanged for 100 years - as Dyson says in his autobiography, Against The Odds - "since the first prototype stopped sucking after ten minutes and just pushed the dirt around the room and the first bag burst on a carpet". Dyson's bag was replaced by a little typhoon that spun at the speed of sound, in a chamber that couldn't clog. A 30-foot experimental cyclone had been built in his workshop but the "eureka" moment came at home in his kitchen in true inventor style with a pair of scissors, some cardboard and a swathe of gaffer tape. The revolutionary Dual Cyclone took the vacuum cleaner sector by storm in 1993 - but not without years of personal struggle and crisis for its inventor. The actual making of money proved extremely difficult. Despite the success of the Ballbarrow (whose patent he had "foolishly" assigned to the company rather than himself), he could find no-one in the UK to back his efforts with cash, so to raise money for research, he sold product licences to America and Japan. This time, in contrast to the Ballbarrow, he was in control of the patent. Known as the G-Force in Japan - and produced in pastel pink - the Dual Cyclone won an international design prize in Tokyo in 1991 and quickly became a luxury status symbol, selling at an incredible price of £1,200 a machine. Persistence has certainly paid off. Dyson reports that his company now controls 20.7pc of the market for vacuum cleaners in the US and had overtaken its rival, Hoover, after sales volumes more than tripled in 2004, with 891,000 units sold. Profits soared to £102.9m last year - up from £43.1m in 2003. Homeowners in the US include former president, Bill Clinton, and helped by guest appearances by the cleaners on cult television shows such as Friends and Ellen, sales grew by 350pc last year. "I've racked my brain to think of when there was another British success of this type and can't think of any since the Beatles," says Dyson. "It is most surprising that an unknown company with a very different looking product can win the number one spot in America in such a short time. It's a notoriously difficult market to crack, and I believe it is our technology, which is developed in Britain, is what they are buying. I hope our success will encourage the British government and industry to place greater emphasis on research and development." The new machine is, known as The Ball because its major feature is the eponymous ball which sits between the upright part of the cleaner and the brush head. "It's like a computer mouse," says Dyson. "You're no longer restricted to the X-Y axis in your movements. With traditional cleaners you have to walk to change direction, but with The Ball, you stand still." Dyson employs 100 staff at his controversial Malaysian factory dedicated to testing products (he closed his British factory in 2002 with 800 redundancies). A departure into washing machines - The Contrarotator, the first washing machine with two drums - is now also based there. He also promotes the fact that 1,200 scientists and engineers are still employed at the Wiltshire headquarters and the entrepreneur, who is also a Government adviser on innovation, insists his is still a British company. "We did try to manufacture in Britain but were forced to capitulate," he says. "Wage levels doubled and I would have gone out of business if I had not taken a decision to move to where we have been able to expand production three times over." Though he confesses to having always been a misfit, he harbours a secret dream. He says: "I occasionally imagine a time when 'dyson' replaces 'hoover'; pulls that cunning stunt like biro, tarmac and sellotape and becomes a noun or a verb on its own and detached from me to such an extent that most people will have no idea that there was ever a man called Dyson." As if. ********** Dyson with innovation 1974: The Ballbarrow. The go-anywhere barrow replaced the traditional wheel with a ball. 1986: The G-Force. His first cleaner, launched in Japan in 1986, became a cult object. 1993: The Dyson Dual Cyclone 01. The machine became the bestselling vacuum cleaner ever. 1998: The DC05. Company turnover reached £190m after this model was launched. 2000: The Contrarotator. The first washing machine with two drums, the product was designed to increase the movement of clothes in the water and therefore improve cleaning. 2002: Moved output from UK to Malaysia, losing 800 jobs. 2002: Dyson launched in America. 2003: Dyson designed a garden, with Jim Honey, at the Chelsea Flower Show. He won. 2005: Dysons became the most popular cleaners in US. | 
