The Dyson Dual Cyclone vacuum cleaner now sells nine times the amount of its nearest rival.

Inventor James Dyson is proud of the innovation that has driven his company's success and the firm continues to plough cash into research and development to continue its progress.

The idea for a bagless vacuum cleaner came to Mr Dyson more than 20 years ago while he was renovating his country house in the Cotswolds.

He said: "In 1978, I became frustrated with my vacuum cleaner it quickly clogged with dust, destroying the suction. I set about solving this problem."

Using £10,000 from shares in a previous invention, the Ballbarrow, to start him off, Mr Dyson spent the next five years developing the Dual Cyclone Vacuum cleaner.

The principle of the technology is based on a design for an industrial cyclone tower that Mr Dyson built in the late 1970s.

This used powerful G-forces to separate dust from the air which is then removed by a filter.

After building 5,127 prototypes Mr Dyson was successful in applying these ideas to create The G-Force vacuum cleaner, which appeared on the front cover of design magazine in 1983.

More models of his vacuum cleaners followed, sweeping up sales all round the world.

The company even developed the DC06, a robotic vacuum cleaner that had three on-board computers, 50 sensory devices and took 60,000 hours of research to make.

In November 2000 Dyson branched out into washing manufacture, saying other washing machines on the market did not flex the fabric enough.

By trying to mirror the action of a hand wash, to remove the dirt from clothes quicker, the company developed the world's first two drum washing machine.