Career
Kenney's most significant patent was granted in March 1907. He had filed the application in 1901, when the notion of an electrically powered cleaner was only beginning to be seen as a possibility. A Savannah woman, Corinne Dufour, who had a year earlier received a patent for an "Electric Carpet Sweeper and Dust Gatherer" whose motor was designed to operate a suction-fan, also is a forgotten figure. Kenney purchased one of the English inventor H. Cecil Booth's vacuum cleaners, and after the 1907 patent was granted, Booth withdrew his own application for a US patent. Litigation followed, and the Vacuum Cleaner Company as the holder of Kenney’s patents, was a party to several lawsuits in subsequent years. When the Vacuum Cleaner Manufacturers' Association was formed in 1919, its membership was entirely made up of licensees under the Kenney patents, "the basic vacuum cleaner patents." Though most such cleaners by this time were electric, they still depended on the mechanism devised and patented by him - the opening in the nozzle sealing contact with the carpet through a vacuum.
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