Sir James Dyson

Sir James Dyson (Dyson)

After scraping through A Levels, James Dyson went to the Royal College of Art where he teamed up with his mentor, Jeremy Fry, an inventor who loved engineering, to develop the Sea Truck. James's next successful invention was the Ballbarrow. He then devised the now-famous bagless vacuum cleaner. After fifteen years, 5,127 prototypes and rejection by a string of companies, the product finally got to market. In 2005, Dyson overtook Hoover to become the biggest vacuum cleaner in America, with a 20.7 per cent share of the market.