Automated pool cleaner
Type of vacuum cleaner for swimming pools

An automated pool cleaner is a vacuum cleaner that is designed to collect debris and sediment from swimming pools with minimal human intervention.
History
Evolution
Swimming pool cleaners evolved from the water filter and early cistern cleaners. The forerunner of today's pool cleaners were cistern cleaners; they were developed due to the need to clean pools and cisterns. Thermae were well known for their elaborate cisterns and prevalent in the early United States. The United States Patent and Trademark Office refers to a cistern cleaner patent filed (though never issued) as early as 1798.
In 1883 John E. Pattison of New Orleans applied for a "Cistern and Tank Cleaner" and the first discovered patent was issued the following year. It swept and scraped the bottom of a cistern or tank and, through a combination of suction and manipulation of the water pressure, was able to separate and remove sediment without removing the water. Over the next 20 years his invention was revised multiple times. Many pool cleaner patents issued in the modern era refer to some of the cistern cleaners as predecessors of their invention.
Early models
The first swimming pool cleaner was invented in 1912 by Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania citizen John M. Davison.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2947645. The first chronological checks are 1798, 1883 and 1912.
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This entry incorporates text from “Automated pool cleaner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.