Butter me impressed: Canton janitor James Spangler sculpted in butter at Ohio State Fair

Canton janitor James Murray Spangler is already enshrined in the National Inventors Hall of Fame for creating the first portable electric vacuum cleaner.

Now, he's enshrined in butter.

Each year, the Ohio State Fair features a butter cow display, and this year the display is honoring Ohio inventors, including Spangler. His butter sculpture features him pushing ... what else ... a vacuum. The display, which is kept a secret in advance, was revealed Tuesday.

“Ohio has been home to many pioneers in science and technology over the last 200 years, and this year’s butter display celebrates that rich history of innovation by paying tribute to four inventors and their groundbreaking inventions,” Jenny Crabtree, senior vice president of communications for the American Dairy Association Mideast, said in a prepared statement.

Who is featured in the Ohio State Fair butter sculptures?

Along with Spangler and the traditional butter cow and calf, the display showcases Thomas Edison with a light bulb and a phonograph, Garrett Morgan with a three-position traffic signal, and Josephine Cochrane with a hand-powered dishwasher.

The display was crafted from 2,000 pounds of butter by a team of Ohio-based sculptors in about 450 hours, with the majority of those being spent inside a 46-degree cooler. Sculptors layer butter onto steel and wooden armatures and gradually refine their shape before chiseling in the fine details, the association said.

“The dishwasher sculpture actually has a transparent door on it so you can see inside, something we’ve never tried before,” lead sculptor Paul Brooke said in a prepared statement. “And we incorporated electricity into the display to illuminate the light bulb and the traffic signal.”

The Ohio State Fair runs July 26 through Aug. 6 in Columbus. The association noted that about 500,000 fairgoers visit the Dairy Products Building each year to see the butter cow display.

Who was James Murray Spangler?

James Murray Spangler was born Nov. 20, 1848, in Plains Township, Pennsylvania. He married Elesta Holtz on May 21, 1874. The couple moved to Akron six years later, then to Canton soon after.

Spangler toiled in a variety of jobs, mostly as a salesman. He worked on a host of inventions on the side — everything from a grain harvester to a wagon cycle for children. But none of his intellectual work panned into riches. By the early 1900s and in his 50s, Spangler landed a job as a janitor at Zollinger Department Store in downtown Canton, inside a building that would later become home to JC Penney.

The story of Spangler's electric suction sweeper invention was tied to his janitorial work at the store.

Afflicted with asthma, he realized that dust kicked up by his cleaning of carpets with a Bissell commercial sweeper and broom was aggravating his condition and making him cough. After closely watching a rotary street sweeper in action, Spangler came up with the idea for a motor-powered sweeper.

He filed paperwork for a patent in 1907. He ironed out some financing. He formed the Electric Suction Sweeper Company with Ray Harned, who worked for the owners of the Zollinger building. Eventually, William "Boss" Hoover bought the Electric Suction Sweeper and Spangler remained on board as production supervisor and was paid a salary of $1,500 per year and royalties until the patent expired in 18 years. Two years later, the company was renamed Hoover Suction Sweeper.

In 1922, it became Hoover Co.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Canton janitor James Spangler sculpted in butter at Ohio State Fair