Dyson Limited is a British technology company established in the United Kingdom by James Dyson in 1991. It designs and manufactures household appliances such as vacuum cleaners, air purifiers, hand dryers, bladeless fans, heaters, hairdryers, and lights.

In 1974, James Dyson bought a Hoover Junior vacuum cleaner, which lost suction after a period of use. Frustrated, Dyson emptied the disposable paper bag to try to restore the suction but this had no effect. On opening the bag to investigate, he noticed a layer of dust inside, clogging the fine material mesh.

Later, Dyson was working on his ballbarrow at a company he had founded (but no longer entirely owned) where a large vacuum system was used to contain the fusion bonded epoxy coating that was sprayed on the wheelbarrow arms as a powder coating. Dyson found the system inefficient and was told by equipment manufacturers that giant cyclone systems were better. Centrifugal separators are a typical method of collecting dirt, dust and debris in industrial settings, but such methods usually were not applied on a smaller scale because of the higher cost. He knew sawmills used this type of equipment, and investigated by visiting a local sawmill at night and taking measurements. He then built a 30-foot model for the ballbarrow factory. While constructing this at home, Dyson realized the function of the cyclone was to extract dust without clogging. Wondering if this could be applied at a smaller scale to a home vacuum, he constructed a cardboard model with sticky tape, connected it to his Hoover with its bag removed, and found it worked satisfactorily.

The directors of the ballbarrow company thought if a better vacuum was possible, Hoover or Electrolux would have invented it. Dyson was undeterred and was kicked out of his company. Jeremy Fry provided 49% of the investment for cyclonic vacuum development, and the rest came from a loan. In the shed behind his house, Dyson developed 5,127 prototype designs between 1979 and 1984. The first prototype vacuum cleaner, a red and blue machine, brought Dyson little success, as he struggled to find a licensee for his machine in the UK and America. Manufacturing companies such as Hoover did not want to license the design, probably because the vacuum bag market was worth $500m and thus Dyson was a threat to their profits.

The only company that expressed interest in the new cyclonic vacuum technology was Dyson’s former employer, Rotork. Built by Italian appliance maker Zanussi and sold by Kleeneze through a mail-order catalogue, the Kleeneze Rotork Cyclon was the first publicly sold vacuum cleaner of Dyson’s design. Only about 500 units were sold in 1983.

In April 1984, Dyson claimed that he had sent the prototype machines, drawings, and confidential information to American consumer-products maker Amway as part of a proposed licensing deal. The deal fell through, but in January 1985 Amway produced the CMS-1000, a machine that was very similar to the Dyson design. Less than a month later, Dyson sued Amway for patent infringement.

In 1985 a Japanese company, Apex Ltd., expressed interest in licensing Dyson’s design and in March 1986 a reworked version of the Cyclon – called G-Force – was put into production and sold in Japan for the equivalent of US$2,000. The G-Force had an attachment that could turn it into a table to save space in small Japanese apartments. In 1991, it won the International Design Fair prize in Japan, and became a status symbol there.

Using the income from the Japanese licence, James Dyson set up Dyson Appliances Limited in 1991. The first dual-cyclone vacuum built under the Dyson name, the DA 001, was produced by American company Phillips Plastics in a facility in Wrexham, Wales, beginning in January 1993 and sold for about £200. Vacuum assembly took place in the unused half of the plastic factory. Due to quality control concerns and Phillips’s desire to renegotiate the terms of their contract to build the vacuum cleaner, Dyson severed the agreement in May 1993. Within two months he set up a new supply chain and opened a new production facility in Chippenham, Wiltshire, England; the first vacuum built at the new facility was completed 1 July 1993. The DA 001 was soon replaced by an almost identical cleaner, the DC01.

Dyson licensed the technology in North America from 1986 to 2001 to Fantom Technologies, after which Dyson entered the market directly.

Even though market research showed that people would not be happy with a transparent container for the dust, Dyson and his team decided to make a transparent container anyway and this turned out to be a popular and enduring feature that has been heavily copied. The DC01 became the biggest selling vacuum cleaner in the UK in just 18 months. By 2001, the DC01 made up 47% of the upright vacuum cleaner market.

The company introduced a cylinder machine, the DC02, and produced a number of special editions and revised models (DC02 Absolute, DC02 De Stijl, DC05, DC04, DC06, DC04 Zorbster). On 2 January 2001, the company name was shortened from Dyson Appliances Ltd. to Dyson Ltd. In April of that year the DC07, a new upright vacuum cleaner using “Root Cyclone” technology with seven cyclone funnels instead of the original dual-cyclone design, was launched. By 2009 Dyson began creating other technologies: the Airblade hand dryer, the Air Multiplier “bladeless” fan and Dyson Hot, the “bladeless” fan heater. In October 2019, Dyson released the Pure Cryptomic, available in a fan version and a heater + fan version. The device is able to remove formaldehyde from the air; this flammable and colourless gas can irritate the skin, eyes, nose, and throat.