The Dustatic101

The Dustatic101 is an electro-static device invented for the purpose of improving the efficiency of rotary floor polishers.

Development

In November 2001 Ian Huntley was employed as the manager of a team of caretakers at Soham Village College. One of the many duties and responsibilities that Huntley had at the school was the maintenance of hard internal floor surfaces, in particular the floor of the school assembly hall. In order to carry out this task, the school provided Huntley and his team with two Numatic International NSX550 rotary floor polishers. During the course of his employment, Huntley had expressed some dissatisfaction with the performance of the floor polishers. In a memo to the headmaster Howard Gilbert, Huntley stated that the rotary action of the polisher created dust, particularly when the brush pad became worn out. In the following months, Huntley improvised an electro-static device and fitted it to the bottom of the floor polisher. The device when activated attracted dust much in the same way that a magnet would attract iron filings. Huntley realised the commercial possibilities of his device and submitted a patent application to the UK Intellectual Property Office. Huntley told friends that he had approached Numatic International and that he had proposed to them the notion of incorporating the electro-static device into the design of their floor polishers in return for receiving a royalty on each unit sold. Huntley decided to call the device the "Dustatic101". Huntley claimed that Numatic International were initially receptive to the proposal and that a meeting had been arranged for mid September 2002. Huntley was arrested in August 2002 and the meeting never took place.

Reaction

The details of Huntley’s contacts with Numatic International did not enter the public domain until the UK Intellectual Property Office granted Huntley his patent in January 2005. Upon being informed about the Dustatic101, the chairman of the British Cleaning Council commented publicly about Huntley’s invention stating, “The Dustatic101 has the potential to reduce dust emissions from rotary floor polishers by as much as 56%. This device would have revolutionised floor polishing. It is a tragedy that his device will never be available on the open market. It just goes to show that there is a fine line between madness and genius.” Huntley has so far refused to let any commercial organisation develop the Dustatic101. [Nathan Yates, Beyond Evil (Blake Publishing, 2005),p.193.]

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