Matthews collection of Tellus (Nilfisk) Vacuum cleaners

1921 M20 TELLUS CLEANER

I inherited this vacuum cleaner from my aunt some years back. She is 93 and still lives a happy life. I have polished the Nilfisk and it is now decorating my home AND it still works!

The Nilfisk was in use in a Cloister where my aunt used to be a maid. She would use it to clean the rooms. It was also quite handy when she was on to phone, she would let the Nilfisk keep running, so the matron wouldn´t be able to hear how long her phone calls were.

Willy, Denmark

Grandmother bought it, I suppose in the late thirties or fourties. We still have the owner's manual where the lady from your advertisment (SvD,18/3 2006) is to be recognised. We still use Nilfisken as a good friend of cleaning our cellar.
I can still feel the smell of DDT when my mother used the machine to treat our winter clothes.

I have a Nilfisk G70 from the 1960s. We inherited it from an old lady living in Stockholm sometime in the middle of the 70s.

It is still working and vacuums very well.

I remember when we got it - we were so young and so happy to have a vacuum cleaner - and the Nilfisk was considered very good quality.

So now we keep on rolling along with it and maybe it will be passed on to the next generation. Strange.

333 Squadron, Norway

Early Sunday morning September 13, 1987. The Royal Norwegian Airforce was flying over the Barents Sea on a NATO surveillance mission. A Soviet jet fighter were following them so closely, that the planes eventually collided. One of the Norwegian planes propellers were clipped in the mid-air clashed and subsequently cut through the fuselage, making an 30 centimeters big hole. If it hadn't been for a Nilfisk GM 80 model, standing in a cupboard and stopping the propeller, the crew are sure that they would have died.

I remember that my mother used to fantasize about having a Nilfisk vacuum cleaner. When I got married myself and had a house to keep I wanted one as well. But money were tight and buying one was out of the question. Nearby was a place where you could rent a Nilfisk for the day. Delivery to the house was included in the price, and it was not allowed to share the machine with anyone. So me and my next door neighbour used to secretly share the expenses - transporting the Nilfisk from one house to the other through the back door, hoping and wishing that the Rental Company wouldn't come early and catch us sharing it. Fortunately they never did, and we could both enjoy cleaning with a vacuum cleaner - instead of using brooms and cloths!

Katharina, Germany

For decades the colour yellow was the identification for high-pressure washers in the market.
Originally, WAP machines were green. At the beginning of the 70´s Wap was contracted by an airline called ATLANTIS. This airline asked for a mobile high pressure washer especially being capable to defrost airfoils.
Wap designed a new machine in the company colours of the air carrier (coca-cola-yellow and fanta-orange). Mr. Oberdorfer, the founder of Wap, liked the colour yellow so much that he decided to use it for all machines in every product line.

Before WAP´s yellow colour, Kärchers products were all blue. Kärcher saw the development of yellow being the colour of high-pressure washers, and decided to switch from blue to a signal-yellow.

Many years later WAP was bought by ALTO, whose products are blue, and in consequence the next colour switch from yellow to blue took place ;-)

I have a Nilfisk model that was produced in 1922. I bought it from an inheritance in Budapest. The former owner was working abroad and when he came home to Hungary he has brought it with him.

This vacuum cleaner was a big sensation in Hungary at this time!!!

Mr. Ritz has put it in the Cleaning Museum in Budapest.