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Neil Fish Fixes Nilfix Vacuum Cleaners

Neil Fish Fixes Nilfix Vacuum Cleaners


People often ask me, "who Neil Fish is?" or is that Neal Fisk?

I reply with, "It's not Neil Fish, it's Nile Fish!"

And that's quite true in a way, for the Nile Fish, the Mormyrus fish is a freshwater elephant fish that sucks up invertibrates buried in the muddy bottom of African rivers. The River Nile can be counted as an African river, and hence, that was chosen by Nilfisk as their logo.

 

It was a great synergy really, as of course the Fisk came from the old Norse meaning for fish, "fiskr" and it holds that "fisker" is a fisherman".

Back in 1898, P.A (Peder. Andersen) Fisker was working as a teacher, trying to make his parents dreams for him come true. However, the innovations in the applications of electricity he read about, made him want to become an electrical engineer, and once qualified, he had a great desire to put electricity to useful work and over 3 years, he travelled to the USA and Scotland in search of inspiration.

As promised, he returned to his mother in Denmark and soon afterwards in 1906, Peder moved to Copenhagen, and invested 2,000 Danish Kroner into a small backyard workshop, where he also lived and slept, and it was there that he began to follow his instincts and produce electric motors.

Within a year, he'd employed an apprentice, and then Peder went into partnership with his former colleague H.M (Hans. Marius) Nielsen, and called the new company, "Fisker and Nielsen".

Peder Fisker had lots of ideas, however the most lucrative applications of Fisker's electric motors were around vacuum cleaners, and in 1910, Fisker patented the first electric vacuum cleaner, in Europe, and called it "Nilfisk"

Nielsen, however, found vacuum cleaners far less stimulating than his business partner, and he left the company, despite Fisker, quickly seeing a need for them to move into the export market. Fisker retained the name "Fisker and Nielsen" for the company, as he was too fiscally tight to pay for new stationary to be made!

Now, over a hundred years later, when I silently, mentally correct yet another caller on the phone, or at my shop counter, who asks me for some "Nilfish parts", or tell me, they have a "Nilfiski vacuum cleaner" I sometimes muse, whether Peder Fisker ever thought of making the name of his vacuum cleaners something more easier for Anglo Saxons to say, and in this now increasingly on-line world, a word that could be more accurately written into a search engine.

However, unlike me Professor Google takes this all in his stride, and patiently serves up the correct results for his imprecise students, when "Nilfix vacuum bags" are typed into the search bar.

Perhaps, it's because they just don't break down, Nil Fix is required?

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