39 Facts About James Dyson

Sir James Dyson was born on 2 May 1947 and is a British inventor, industrial designer, farmer and business magnate who founded Dyson Ltd.

James Dyson is best known as the inventor of the dual cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner, which works on the principle of cyclonic separation.

James Dyson served as the Provost of the Royal College of Art from August 2011 to July 2017, and opened a new university, the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology, on Dyson's Wiltshire campus in September 2017.

James Dyson was born 2 May 1947 in Cromer, Norfolk, one of the three children of Janet M and Alec William Dyson.

James Dyson was educated at Gresham's School, an independent boarding school in Holt, Norfolk, from 1956 to 1965, when his father died of prostate cancer.

James Dyson spent one year at the Byam Shaw School of Art, and then studied furniture and interior design at the Royal College of Art before moving into engineering.

James Dyson helped design the Sea Truck in 1970 while studying at the Royal College of Art.

James Dyson's first original invention, the Ballbarrow, was a modified version of a wheelbarrow using a ball instead of a wheel.

James Dyson stuck with the idea of a ball, inventing the Trolleyball, a trolley that launched boats.

James Dyson then designed the Wheelboat, which could travel at speeds of 64 kilometres per hour on both land and water.

James Dyson became frustrated with his Hoover Junior's diminishing performance: the dust bag pores kept becoming clogged with dust thus reducing suction.

Partly supported by his wife's salary as an art teacher, and after fifteen years and about 5,127 prototypes, James Dyson launched the "G-Force" cleaner in 1983.

However, no manufacturer or distributor would handle his product in the UK, as it would have disturbed the valuable market for replacement dust bags, so James Dyson launched it in Japan through catalogue sales.

James Dyson filed a series of patents for his dual cyclone vacuum cleaner EP0037674 in 1980.

In early 2005, it was reported that James Dyson cleaners had become the market leaders in the United States by value.

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

In mid-2014, James Dyson personally appeared in Tokyo to introduce his "360 Eye" robotic vacuum cleaner.

In 2000, James Dyson expanded his appliance range to include a washing machine called the ContraRotator, which had two rotating drums moving in opposite directions.

In 2002, Dyson created a realisation of the optical illusions depicted in the lithographs of Dutch artist M C Escher.

In October 2006 James Dyson launched the James Dyson Airblade, a fast hand dryer that uses a thin sheet of moving air as a squeegee to remove water, rather than attempting to evaporate it with heat.

James Dyson is the UK's biggest investor in robotics and artificial intelligence research, employing over 3,500 engineers and scientists, and engaging in more than 40 university research programmes.

In March 2016, James Dyson announced a second new multimillion-pound research and development centre on a 517-acre former Ministry of Defence site at Hullavington, Wiltshire.

James Dyson said it aimed to double its UK-based workforce in the next five or six years.

James Dyson assembled a team of more than 400 people for the project.

In October 2019, James Dyson announced that the electric car project had been cancelled due to it not being commercially viable.

James Dyson has several times accused Chinese spies and students of copying technological and scientific secrets from the UK through the planting of software bugs and by infiltrating British industries, institutions, and universities after they left.

James Dyson complained that China benefits from stealing foreign designs, flouting of product copyrights, and a two-speed patent system that discriminates against foreign firms with unreasonably longer times.

The James Dyson group stated to The Guardian in 2014: "At no time did the [group's former] non-UK structure deliver any significant tax advantage and, of the entities in question, all have been dissolved".

In 1998, James Dyson was one of the chairmen and chief executives of 20 FTSE 100 companies who signed a statement published in The Financial Times calling on the government for early British membership of the Eurozone.

James Dyson was one of the most prominent UK business leaders to publicly support Brexit before the referendum in June 2016.

Since the referendum, James Dyson has stated that Britain should leave the EU Single Market and that this would "liberate" the economy and allow Britain to strike its own trade deals around the world.

In 2017, James Dyson suggested that the UK should leave the EU without an interim deal and that "uncertainty is an opportunity".

Previously, in 2014, James Dyson had said he would be voting to leave the European Union to avoid being "dominated and bullied by the Germans".

In November 2017, James Dyson was critical of the UK government Brexit negotiations and said "we should just walk away and they will come to us".

In November 2015, James Dyson lost its case against EU energy labelling laws in the European General Court; however, a subsequent appeal in the European Court of Justice said that the previous ruling had "distorted the facts" and "erred in law".

In 2022 James Dyson sued Channel 4 and ITN over allegations of exploitation of workers at one of his suppliers' factories.

James Dyson owns two Gulfstream G650ER private jets registered G-VIOF and G-GSVI.

James Dyson previously owned an older Gulfstream G650, registered G-ULFS and currently owns a AgustaWestland AW-139 helicopter.

James Dyson has invested heavily into buying agriculture lands across Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, and Gloucestershire.